


Wild Roses - First Blood

by Ginnybag



Series: Wild Roses [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Because Lady Une isn't just a Secretary, Dubious Consent, Episode Zero, Extremely Expensive Vintage Jewellery, Miscarriage, Multi, Poetry-as-foreplay, Underage - Freeform, Zechs reads - a lot, mild drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:26:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 79,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginnybag/pseuds/Ginnybag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following on from Victoria Academy, Zechs leaves childhood behind to join his adopted brother in a daring new experiment. His first mission starts the formation of a legend, but the personal consequences will change things for both Treize and Zechs forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_ Early June AC 191 _   
_ Lake Victoria Military Academy _

 

 

Instructor Treize Khushrenada leaned his slender body back against the cool plaster wall of the Academy Great Hall and scanned his eyes around the room idly before flicking them to the elegant little pocket watch he was holding in his hand.

 

Spread across the space in front of him, arranged in neat rows and columns more than an arm’s length apart, a sea of heads were bent over small, square desks, hair of every hue known to the human race shining in the sunlight pouring through the skylights above. Lithe bodies in identical uniforms shifted and fidgeted in the wooden chairs, giving some clue to the state of their owner’s thoughts as they sweated over the papers in front of them.

 

It was warm in the Hall. Treize had long since discarded his uniform cloak and was wishing he could do the same with his heavy wool jacket. The cadets had to be feeling the same, but he doubted that was why they were sweating.

 

Most of them probably hadn’t even noticed the rising temperature of the room as they worked.

 

Treize shook his head fondly, scanning the room again in approval of the level of concentration his students were showing, unusual at this point in the schedule. It had been brutal few weeks for the cadets as they faced their final evaluations. They’d all been pushed harder than they had even dreamed possible and they were all utterly exhausted.

 

The redhead wondered what the reaction would be from his charges if they knew their teachers were scarcely less worn than they were. Each cadet, after all, only had to worry about themselves and their friends if they were generous. They prepared, they showed up where and when they’d been told to, they were assessed and they were dismissed to fall into bed.

 

The instructors, on the other hand, had to worry about every cadet and all the logistics that made the testing possible, besides. Even tonight, when the cadets were celebrating the final exam being over, the instructors and staff would be working, frantically marking papers, compiling results, comparing transcripts and making decisions that would affect the lives of their students for years to come. Grades had to be awarded, promotions requested, assignments and recommendations considered. In two days time, each cadet would meet with their personal tutor for a confidential interview and their options, plans and dreams would be discussed. Two days after that, they would graduate the Academy as officers.

For three weeks, the entire Academy had eaten, slept and breathed the final evaluations. The lower classes had been dismissed in May as they always were and only the seniors had stayed on – to suffer through a whirl of medical and psychological exams, invasive and meticulous, followed by two weeks of brutal practical assessment and finally a week of rigorous theoretical exams. Treize had barely stopped long enough to grab a coffee as he chaperoned full physicals, supervised and marked practicals, offered revision classes for the theory and dealt with the human cost of such pressure in cadets who sickened, cried, and found they couldn’t sleep. He’d dispensed support, reassurance and advice until his throat hurt, along with aspirin like toffees, tissues by the forest load and the occasional cup of hot chocolate.

 

He glanced at his watch again, and then let his eyes seek out one set of cadets in particular. Seated as they were, alphabetically by surname, several of those Treize was particularly involved with were grouped together slightly behind and to the right of the dead centre of the Hall.

 

The strong summer sunlight brought out highlights in hair of three distinctly different colours as the cadets in question shifted in place. Otto, easily the most fidgety of the three all through the exam, was chewing the end of his pen worriedly and the jerky movement was making coppery glints flash from his chestnut curls. Treize suspected the boy was vain enough to have hated it if he’d known, but the teacher had little sympathy. The same sun would be turning his own hair to a fiery halo.

 

Besides, if Otto wasn’t careful, he was going to chew straight through his pen and then he really would have something to worry about. Ink all over his paper would not do his final mark any favours.

 

The instructor had gotten to know Otto reasonably well since the end of the autumn term, finding him dependable and good-humoured, if not particularly outstanding, and he knew why he was so nervous.

 

Otto’s cumulative average up until the final assessment series had put him just within the top twenty of the class and he was desperate to stay there. He had definite ideas about what he wanted for his first active post and cadet folklore had long rumoured that the top twenty cut pretty much got to choose their own. There was a certain amount of truth to it – but Treize had already decided it wouldn’t matter in Otto’s case. It was therefore sweet but totally unnecessary for the boy to fret so.

 

The two cadets sitting directly in front and to the right of Otto had no such concerns.

 

Black hair flared blue and blond, pure white but the only movement from either student was the steady left-to-right progress of their writing hands across their pages. Their concentration was so absolute that from the moment the exam had begun, neither had stopped writing long enough to crack open the regulation bottle of water each cadet was allowed at their desk. The only time the pair had even looked up from their papers was to reach for the data-books provided, or their calculators, and neither of them had needed those very often, either.

 

As Julian Larkspur had said aboard the Aquarius, Noin and Marquise had been ranked first and second in the class from day one, switching only ever with each other. They’d come into the final assessments with averages only hundredth’s of a point apart and had battled relentlessly for the edge all the way through. They were so closely matched that no-one, not even the instructors, would know who had finally come out on top until absolutely all of their marks were tallied. It had already been decided that each of their evaluations would be scored or marked twice to be certain of the result.

 

In March, Treize had been sure Noin was going to win – she had just an edge of talent as far as the instructor was concerned – but in the past few weeks he’d found himself not quite so sure. Zechs had changed in the last couple of months, developing a poise Treize would never have predicted and a focussed intensity even greater than he’d already possessed. Something in the boy had settled into a surety and self-confidence that complemented the sudden stage of physical development he’d hit. Treize was almost used to meeting his childhood friend’s eyes directly now, and he was rapidly learning to enjoy the sense of equality in his interactions with the younger man.

 

Looking at him now, Treize was glad Zechs would never wear his cadet uniform again after the exam – it didn’t suit him anymore. It was a child’s costume, and that was something Zechs no longer was.

 

As the instructor watched, Zechs sat back in his chair, closed his paper, set down his pen and reached for the bottle of water. He twisted the top free, downed half of it in three easy swallows, and set it aside to give his head a little shake that made his ponytail dance across his collar. A moment later, he opened his paper at the first page and began to read swiftly.

 

Treize gazed approvingly at this evidence of exam technique and found his scrutiny returned across the Hall when Zechs looked up from his checking, set the paper aside a final time and met his gaze.

 

The instructor was invigilating the exam and it was a technical breach of protocol when he raised an eyebrow speculatively, as good as silently asking, ‘Well?’

 

Zechs shrugged so slightly it was barely there and then smiled as he gave a confident nod.

 

Treize smiled back warmly. He’d known Zechs would do well - even if they hadn’t spent endless hours in the last few weeks drilling all the theory and formulae the boy was likely to need - but it had been a tough paper and the teacher was glad to know his student had coped with it.

 

The blonde’s smile warmed to match before he broke the eye contact to lean back in his chair and reach for his water again.

 

Treize huffed an indulgent breath and returned his attention to the rest of the cadet’s.

 

Slightly behind Zechs, catching his movements out of the corner of her eye, Lucrezia Noin looked up in time to see his silent communication with their teacher. She smiled herself at the affection in the exchange and subconsciously finalised a decision she’d been mulling over for quite some time. Almost without thinking, she let the sentence she was writing slip slightly away from its original textbook perfection, stopped, re-read, and then continued the essay with an air of satisfaction.

 

On the far side of the Hall from Treize, Liliya Valadin watched her pupil’s actions knowingly. She was about to make a very great deal of money from her fellow officers, and all by simply being a good judge of other women.

 

 

___________________________________________

 

 

The exam finished some fifteen minutes later, to the great relief of everyone in the Hall.

 

Although every cadet was long too disciplined to move without permission, there was still a subtle wave of relaxation that swept across the room as the papers were collected; a little fidgeting and rustling to disturb the silence as Treize supervised the shuffling and depositing of the papers into the secured boxes he was monitoring.

 

There were no names on them – cadets were identified by randomly assigned numbers for each exam to prevent any cheating in the marking. Even so, the papers were still resorted into a random order, so that each instructor would receive a cross-section of the room and wouldn’t be able to guarantee the marking of a favourite by deliberate selection of an area of the Hall. The same thing happened with the computer-based exams, with the master machine randomising which instructor received which answer file.

 

Zechs watched absently as the boxes were sealed shut and Treize authenticated the lock with his signature, idly curious about the way Valadin and the other supervising officers were deferring to his friend. Treize was Major Khushrenada now, true, not Captain as he had been for all of Zechs’s training but the promotion was less than a week old, so new that he probably hadn’t had to polish the new rank pins on his uniform yet. With one exception, every other officer in the room still had either rank or seniority in their favour and yet they were acting as though it were the other way around.

 

It made him wonder what they knew that he didn’t. Even Vlad the Impaler was doing it and that was damning proof that something was going on all on its own.

 

Tracing thoughtless patterns on the rough surface of his desk with his fingertips, Zechs sighed softly and thought over what he did know.

 

He knew Treize had been expecting the promotion – he’d been pleased by it, but not surprised – and he knew the older man was leaving the Academy at the end of the term next week, just as Zechs was – he’d been packing his rooms up for days.

 

From several other clues, the cadet could also take guesses that Treize’s new assignment wouldn’t be nearly as sedentary as his teaching had been. The older man had been ruthless in what he packed for shipping directly home rather than to his next base, discarding a lot of the creature comforts he’d acquired over the last three years and paring back even his most personal items to bare essentials.

 

He’d been tightening his self-discipline lately as well, being as strict with himself as he had been in his sorting of his things. Zechs knew from a dozen shared meals over revision that the older man was watching what he ate, and he’d encountered his friend several times in the simulator suites or the training rooms, both alone and with other officers. Zechs had never thought Treize one inch out of shape but he hadn’t needed Otto’s admiring comments to notice the changes the regime had wrought. Treize was bringing himself back to the same peak of fitness and training the cadets had been honed to, and there had to be a reason for it.

 

There were the rumours, of course. Zechs had ignored them at first but they persisted, and in every retelling they grew more informed and determined. Rumour suggested that Treize wasn’t just going to a headquarters post somewhere, as would have been obvious, but to active front line combat as no less than a full Wing Commander.

 

The blond cadet couldn’t decide whether he wanted that to be true or not. It seemed unlikely, given everything, yet it was the explanation that fit Treize’s behaviour best and it had both pros and cons that Zechs still hadn’t weighed up.

 

Without a shadow of a doubt, Zechs knew that he himself was headed to a combat piloting post when he graduated next week. If Treize was about to become Wing Commander somewhere, then there was the chance that Zechs would get to stay with him but there was also a chance, a very real chance, that the older man was setting himself up to be killed.

 

Wing Commander was an incredible promotion from Academy Instructor, especially for a man who, despite all his merits and decorations, had never seen an actual field rank higher than Flight Leader, with responsibility only for a small sub-formation within the much larger squadrons that made up each Wing. It was a level of authority on an entirely different scale, requiring entirely different skills and abilities, and Zechs had studied more than enough history to know that no officer had ever achieved it so early in their career before, not in either the Alliance regular forces or the Specials. It meant a jump to a position within touching distance of the highest echelons of command, and represented a stunning opportunity if it had been offered – but Specials officers led from the front and Wing Commanders, accordingly, weren’t known for their survival rate.

 

No, Zechs decided as the instructors conferred for a few moments about something, the rumour mill was wrong. Perhaps in other circumstances Treize might have gone for it but not with things as they were. He wouldn’t take such a dangerous post with so little background, not with Leia and Marie in the balance; his life wasn’t only his to gamble with.

 

Of course, Zechs hadn’t been with the older man when he’d flown to Moscow for a few days in the Easter break – he’d remained at the Academy to give husband and wife vital time alone to come to terms with Leia’s recent miscarriage – and by staying behind, he’d missed overhearing the first full-scale argument Treize and Leia had ever had. If he’d been in place to hear some of what they’d been arguing about, the cadet might not have been as quick to decide Treize wouldn’t take the risk.

 

The officer in question broke Zechs from his thoughts a moment later by turning in place at the top of the room and letting his gaze roam the space. He gathered attention just with the gesture and waited until he had the eye of every cadet there before he spoke.

 

“Cadet class will come to parade rest,” he ordered, his voice carrying without effort, and Zechs, like every other cadet in the Hall, stood from his chair and snapped to the posture required in the blink of an eye. He locked his hands behind his back and kept his eyes on his officer.

 

There was a pause whilst Valadin came to stand on Treize’s right, Larkspur on his left and the other officers in a line either side, an action a little unusual. Zechs would have frowned if discipline hadn’t held him.

 

Treize appeared to exchange glances with the Russian woman before he gave the next, expected, order. “Cadet class, dismissed,” he said, his tone exactly as it always was.

 

The hall full of cadets relaxed, bodies drooping with relief and tiredness. Zechs reached to gather the few things he’d brought into the exam with him, hearing Otto’s noisy sigh of contentment behind him with the first twinges of a smile.

 

Perhaps now he’d find the time to actually celebrate the fact that he’d turned sixteen on the 1st of May.

 

Treize halted the thought in its tracks by speaking again. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, pitching his voice to cut through the hum of noise. He had everyone’s attention again immediately, all of them wondering what he’d forgotten to say.

 

The obvious, it turned out.

 

“Congratulations, cadets,” the teacher intoned formally, making the hum swell in appreciation.

 

Treize paused for just another heartbeat before smiling with true warmth. “Congratulations,” he repeated, “officers. And welcome.”

 

Discipline or no discipline, Zechs couldn’t help but gape in shock as every instructor in the room came to perfect attention in one fluid movement, saluting their students with parade ground precision.

 

The blond was halfway to returning to the salute before it dawned on him that it wasn’t just the instructors who’d invigilated the exam standing in the line, it was every instructor, every officer, the Academy had on staff and that – though he somehow hadn’t noticed it earlier – every last one of them was in full dress uniform.

 

And they were right, he realised, feeling stunned. God, but they were right! It was done, it was over! In a week, the class would have graduated and joined the ranks of the Specials as its newest officers but the passing out parade was only a formality. As each cadet had finished their paper, they’d also finished their training and that meant they were no longer cadets! There were no retakes on the finals and no one took them who wasn’t going to at least scrape a pass. The moment Treize had dismissed the class from the exam, every one of them had made the jump from cadet to officer.

 

Zechs stared across the room at his friend, finding Treize looking back at him with a world of pride and affection in his eyes. He smiled as the officers broke their salute, raising his eyebrows in a silent question for the second time that day.

 

The younger man again gave a single nod as his answer, then found himself laughing helplessly, joyfully, as the room exploded into whoops and cheers as his classmates realised what he had.

 

In seconds, the ordered discipline of the Hall had dissolved into the excited chaos of celebrating teenagers, and the men and women who’d spent three long years drilling that discipline into them stood and watched it happen, most of them chuckling at the sight.

 

Movement from his right made Zechs break his gaze from Treize’s so he could turn in time to catch Noin as she threw herself at him. She ended up a good foot above the floor as he swept her up and returned the exuberant hug.

 

“I can’t believe it!” she squeaked into his ear, her voice driven high by excitement. “Did you know they were going to do that?!” she demanded.

 

Zechs shook his head. “I didn’t have a clue, I promise,” he answered, as he set her down and gazed at her fondly. She’d mussed her hair in her leap at him and her eyes were bright with pleasure, enhancing the unusual colour. She looked, he thought, very, very pretty. “Happy?” he asked, and Noin beamed at him.

 

“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, then glanced beyond him as Zechs felt a touch to the small of his back. He twisted to look over his shoulder, then turned with a grin when he caught his roommate’s soft brown eyes. They were sparkling with joy, too, and it was Zechs who reached for the hug first this time.

 

Otto returned it in a less dramatic fashion than Noin, but it was no less warm. “Fuck me,” the dark haired boy sighed in relieved emphasis and Zechs laughed all over again. He knew Otto had been more stressed by the finals than either Noin or himself and had probably struggled with the paper they’d just sat – it was nice to see he hadn’t suffered too badly.

 

“Later, maybe,” Zechs whispered, feeling the mischievous streak Otto encouraged in him rise. “If you ask me nicely.”

 

“Oh, promises…,” Otto purred as he pulled away. He caught Noin’s arm as he disengaged and tugged at her before she could react. “Come here, you,” he ordered and Zechs watched as they hugged each other eagerly, any trace of enmity between them forgotten in the moment.

 

Footsteps behind him and the touch of another warm hand to his shoulder made him turn a third time, and Zechs bit his lip at the sight of his adopted brother. Treize had shucked his dress-cape again, carrying it folded over one arm easily as he smiled at the blond.

 

“Is it safe to interrupt, do you think?” he asked impishly. He looked as cheerful as Zechs felt.

 

“I don’t know,” Zechs replied, grinning as he looked over his two friends. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Otto was taking advantage…,” he drawled

 

There was a horrified yell as his words carried, followed by Otto and Noin letting each other go with unseemly haste. Treize chuckled at them, gave them a moment to compose themselves, and then offered his hand to each of them in turn. Otto he congratulated with a friendly pat on the shoulder, saying something in the boy’s native German that made Zechs blink in incomprehension and surprise. He hadn’t known Treize spoke the language. Noin, in her turn, received a gallant kiss to her cheek that made her blush bright red, much to the amusement of her male classmates, and a comment about ‘hoping she would forgive the difference, since they weren’t on a battlefield.’

 

Zechs, not quite sure what to expect when Treize finally turned to him, found that the older man simply used their handclasp to pull him into his arms.

 

“Congratulations, Illia,” he murmured, his tone carrying all the pride that had been in his eyes, all the love that was never spoken of but always there. He, more than anyone else, knew what this day really meant to the younger man and the knowledge of it let Zechs sink into the offered embrace willingly.

 

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Zechs felt utterly content. Now, he promised himself, things could really begin.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

# Early June AC 191

# Lake Victoria Military Academy

 

 

The distinctive scent caught at Treize’s senses as he was occupied marking papers in the staff lounge later that night, distracting him from his reading as he looked up hopefully.

 

Hard metal clinked against the inlaid surface of the desk he was working over a moment later and Treize smiled in appreciation, shifting in his chair as a cloth –covered something or other sitting on a tray appeared in his line of sight.

 

“Hello, Liliya,” he greeted warmly. “Is that what I think it is?”

 

Liliya Valadin settled herself onto the arm of Treize’s chair gracefully and pulled away the concealing cloth with a magician’s flourish to reveal the elegant, ornate lines of a samovar. It was an obvious antique; the silver metal of its construction was tarnished with age and the decorative etchings faded, but it was also obviously in perfect working order, as evidenced by the steam beginning to rise from the tiny vents in the body.

 

It was one of the smaller examples of its make, holding not much more than a litre of water at a time, but it was still beautiful and a welcome taste of home. Treize had seen it before, sitting in Valadin’s rooms, but she’d never set it to working for him before.

 

From the edge of the tray, the lithe woman picked up a small copper kettle and set it securely in the crown of the samovar so that it would heat in the steam. Treize already knew the kettle contained the zavarka, the concentrated tea extract that would be mixed with the hot water for drinking – it was that he’d smelt at the door.

 

There were delicate glasses in their filigree holders on the tray as well, along with spoons, a tiny bowl of sugar lumps and a small jug of milk. Liliya was clearly planning to serve tea in true, grand old fashion – an impression enhanced when she smirked at him impishly and produced a bottle of vodka from somewhere under her clothes.

 

How on earth she’d managed that, Treize had no idea. As far as he could see, there was nowhere she could have hidden a bottle that size without it being immediately obvious. Like him, Liliya had left the exam Hall and straight gone to her rooms to strip off her uniform, shower and re-dress in clothes more suited to both the weather and the fact that they were off-duty. For Treize – and indeed most of the officers on the base – that had basically amounted to a t-shirt and a pair of light casual trousers but trust Liliya not to conform. For once, her tall, lithe figure wasn’t hidden behind the layers and layers of her austere uniform – quite the opposite. Short of the times she’d been deliberately stripping for him, Treize didn’t think he’d ever seen so much of her skin.

 

The thin silk summer dress she was wearing was a beautiful thing, oriental in style from high collar to screen-print pattern and probably very expensive. The cool, sheer fabric skimmed her body with just a fraction of space between it and her skin and the hem stopped a good three inches above her knee, leaving her legs, like her arms, completely bare except for her neat little sandals. She’d tossed a sweater over her shoulders in deference to the chill of the desert night but it wasn’t fastened, and her hair was arranged in loose curls. If Treize had been getting surprised double takes from the cadets all afternoon – those who hadn’t had cause to see him informally before, at least – then Liliya had probably been responsible for all out, jaw-dropped shock.

 

She’d certainly gotten the attention of most of their colleagues, the redhead noticed, smiling appreciatively at her as she shook the bottle invitingly, then leaned over to set it down on the table. She leaned a little further, to fuss with the samovar, and Treize instinctively found himself putting a hand on her slender waist to help her balance.

 

“Dare I ask what I’ve done to merit such an effort?” Treize asked her in their shared native tongue.

 

The female officer looked over her shoulder at him, eyes warm. “It’s late, we deserve to celebrate, and there’s nothing wrong with a little tradition now and then. Especially when I’ll soon have no-one to share it with,” she explained.

 

“Mmm,” Treize agreed. “I meant you, my dear. Not your tea-set.” He let his hand slip a little as he spoke, so that it came to rest just on the top of her hip.

 

The touch wasn’t, quite, appropriate between fellow officers or even between friends but Treize didn’t particularly care. There were two or three of the other male officers shooting him envious or jealous looks, one of the women looked downright disapproving and Julian Larkspur one table over was grinning at them, but none of them would say anything directly. None of them dared. Valadin would make their lives hell in the next academic year if they got on her bad side and the rumours about Treize’s future were flying thick and fast. Even the slowest of them was bright enough to work out he could be a bad man to cross if there was any truth to the stories.

 

“What makes you assume I made the effort for you, darling?” Liliya asked archly, looking over her shoulder to raise perfectly shaped brows in a haughty question.

 

It made Treize smile; her little game playing was something he rather enjoyed and he’d learned to be quite good at it over the years. “Your make-up and your hair are absolutely perfect, Lils,” he replied, chuckling coolly. “If you’d met someone else, they wouldn’t be.”

 

“I might have been stood up,” she returned.

 

Treize laughed outright, then gave a tug with his hand that tumbled her off the arm of his chair into his lap. “Not a chance, my dear,” he denied over her indignant squeak of surprise. “Not by any man with a pulse.”

 

“Treize Aleksandr Nikolaievich Khushrenad!” Liliya exclaimed in protest. She aimed an open-handed slap at his head. “How dare you!”

 

Treize caught her wrist in his hand, stopping her from connecting. “Hush, woman,” he bade. “I can live without my Sunday name, thank you. This is only where you would have ended up in any case,” he said, gesturing at her position. “It just happens to have been on my terms rather than yours for once.”

 

“Aren’t you sure of yourself,” Liliya returned primly.

 

“Yes,” Treize answered. “And whose fault is that?”

 

For a moment, Treize wondered if he really had gone too far – Liliya’s eyes were flashing fire at him, heat lightning behind the smoky grey – then she smiled at him indulgently and settled her weight more comfortably as she reached for her samovar again.

 

With swift, practiced motions she mixed the tea with the water, added a splash of vodka to each glass and sugar and milk to their individual tastes, then passed one to Treize.

 

The other Russian took it from her in careful fingers, turning it to grip the handle of the filigree holder before raising it in salute. “ _Na zdorovje_ , Lilishka,” he murmured, and took his first sip.

 

“ _Na zdorovje_ ,” Liliya murmured back, “Sasha, darling.”

 

Julian Larkspur shook his head at them, his expression resigned. “Bloody hell,” he muttered in disgust, “it’s the march of the Red Army.”

 

Liliya didn’t react except to raise a questioning brow; Treize levelled a cool look at the other man. “My family were Tsarists,” he said quietly, reverting to English with no effort.

 

Larkspur blinked in surprise, clearly caught off guard, though whether he’d forgotten he would be understood or whether he’d simply though no one would make anything of it, Treize didn’t know. “Sorry?” he asked blankly.

 

“My family were Tsarists,” Treize repeated. “Russian nobility.”

 

“Oh?” For a moment, Julian still seemed puzzled, then the light seemed to dawn. “Oh! Right! Of course they were,” he agreed. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else, I suppose.”

 

Treize nodded in confirmation. “Most likely not,” he said. “It’s a fair bet to be the case for any officer with Russian blood and a noble title. Referring to us all as the ‘Red Army’ is likely to get you into trouble. Russians have very long memories.”

 

Larkspur bridled. “For God’s sake, man, it was only a joke!” he defended. “I wasn’t intending to offend you.”

 

“Will you still think it funny when I tell you I have Romanov blood?” Treize asked softly and found a certain amount of sadistic pleasure in the shocked looks the remark garnered him. More people than Larkspur had obviously been listening, and even Liliya was looking at him in surprise.

 

“I didn’t know that, darling,” she said eventually.

 

“I don’t think anyone did,” Julian spluttered. “Damn, Khushrenada. You’re just full of surprises. I thought my family was old…!”

 

“Quite,” Treize quipped. “I’m not offended,” he told the engineering officer. “But I know several officers who would have been, and there are a few cadets on the lists who might have found your joke in poor taste.”

 

Larkspur relaxed a little. “Ah,” he sighed. “Thanks for the head’s up.” He turned slightly to look at Valadin, openly curiosity marking his pleasant features. “I’m sorry if I offended you, as well. It didn’t occur to me that your family might have such a connection.”

 

Valadin nodded politely. “Thank you, Julian, but mine doesn’t – we’re not nearly old enough.” She looked up at Treize again, studying him closely from her vantage point. “I really didn’t know that about you,” she said to him alone, speaking once again in Russian. “Why hadn’t you told me?”

 

“It honestly hadn’t ever occurred to me to,” Treize answered her. “I didn’t think it would matter.”

 

Liliya turned her head to look at her tea glass. “It doesn’t, I suppose,” she said. “I simply wasn’t aware. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you marry after all,” she added, forcing lightness into her tone and the teasing smile that touched her lips. “If I’d known what a prize I’d had in my hand, so to speak, I might not have been so willing to share.”

 

Treize laughed at her, as he was expected to do, but he raised a wondering eyebrow when he was sure she wasn’t looking. He’d known her long enough and intimately enough that he hadn’t missed the strain in her cover of good humour, and it made him think.

 

Not knowing what to say that wouldn’t be either an obvious change of subject or horribly tactless, Treize contented himself with turning his attention back to the papers he was marking in the vain hope of getting through them soon enough that he wouldn’t be sleep deprived in the morning.

 

Liliya let him work without interrupting him – she’d waded through too much of her own work in the last few weeks to do that – occasionally moving her weight a little as she topped off his glass, first with tea laced with a splash of vodka, then with tea-and-vodka in fairly equal measures and finally, as the hour began to grow truly late – or early, as the case was – with vodka with a splash of tea.

 

The staff lounge emptied slowly as Treize marked paper after paper, one after another of his colleagues finishing their own workload for the night or becoming bored with whatever pastime they were indulging in and saying their goodbyes as they drifted off to bed. Eventually, only Treize and Liliya were left, with Julian Larkspur still sitting near them, reading peaceably.

 

Liliya reached to refill Treize’s glass again, and the smell of the contents warned him she’d abandoned the tea altogether before he took his first sip. He swallowed slowly, then looked up as a hand suddenly appeared across his pile of papers, preventing him from applying his pen to them.

 

“Hand them over, Khushrenada,” Larkspur said good-naturedly, grinning at the way Treize blinked at him in delayed surprise.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Treize asked carefully. Liliya had, he realised as he moved, fed him more of her vodka than he’d thought and his head was just the slightest bit fuzzy from the alcohol.

 

“The exam papers – hand them over. I’ll finish them and pass them back tomorrow for you to check.” The older man canted his colleagues a look that might have been affectionate. “She’s obviously determined to get you drunk,” he said cheerfully. “And if she pours much more of that ‘tea’ down you, she’ll succeed, so give me the papers, before you decide the words to the Hymn of Russia constitute the right answers, be a gentleman and stop making the lady wait.”

 

Treize shook his head slowly. “Thank you, but no. It’s my responsibility and….”

 

“Don’t be an idiot, man,” Julian interrupted mildly. “Call it a leaving present if you want and go and enjoy yourself. God knows, one of us should!” He closed his fingers around the top edge of the papers and tugged. “If you have to make it up to me, promise me you’ll fence with me before you leave,” he instructed.

 

Treize blinked again, resisting the pull until Liliya lifted her head from his shoulder where she’d been resting it and smiled at the two men. “Let him, darling,” she instructed softly and Treize conceded silently, releasing his hold on his exam papers.

 

“Thank you,” he told the other man. “Let me know when,” he added, and felt a measure better when the engineer grinned brightly and nodded once before stepping away from the table to scoop his own things and heading for the door. “Have fun now,” he ordered and let the door close solidly behind him.

 

Liliya sat up a little more as it did, stretching lithely as she looked at Treize. “And look at that,” she said wonderingly. “We’re all alone.”

 

Treize smiled at her. “Do we need to be?” he asked.

 

“We might, at that,” Liliya answered. She settled back into herself, then took one of Treize’s hands in hers, using it first for balance as she hopped to the floor, and then to pull him to his feet as well. “Come with me,” she bade quietly.

 

Obediently, Treize gathered up the stuff she directed him to, clearing the lounge of all their personal belongings, and then followed the woman from the room and down the corridors to the officer’s suites. His own was on the top floor, but as he tried to turn to head there, Liliya tugged on his hand again and he realised she was heading for her own rooms on the ground floor. “Lils?” he asked in vague surprise. It wasn’t that he’d never been in her suite before – he had, many times, but it was unusual, especially when Treize was fairly sure of where the evening was going.

 

“Shush, darling,” Liliya ordered. “Allow me my plans and secrets,” she said with an impish smile. “I have something… different… in mind for us tonight.”

 

‘Different’ in Liliya-speak covered a hell of a lot, most of which was complex, embarrassing or painful for the other party involved and occasionally all three at once. To date, it had always been the worth the payoff, but Treize wasn’t sure he either wanted or was up to Liliya’s usual games this evening.

 

Valadin, glancing over her shoulder at the tall man, read his hesitation from his body language with all the ease of the expert she was at such things. No, he wasn’t willing for her mind games and mild bondage scenes tonight; he hadn’t been for months.

 

In fact, the last time she’d managed to coax him into anything along those lines had been a quick, spur-of-the-moment encounter in one of the suit sheds at the end of the February half term. Both involved heavily in all the final live-fire training exercises as they had been, they’d found themselves working late in the deserted shed. Predictably, boredom and stress had converted into lust for them and they’d wound up against the side armour of a silent Tragos, Liliya’s skirt hitched up around her waist and her hands tied firmly behind her back with a spare bit of electrical cabling.

 

Three days later, he’d learned his wife had lost the baby no one but Treize and her doctor’s had known she was carrying and he hadn’t been the same since.

 

Liliya had bullied most the details of what had happened out of a distraught Zechs, by catching him unawares and keeping him talking around the subject of their mutual friend until he began to slip in his plans of keeping it all under his hat. To his credit, Valadin had been quite impressed with both the little blonde’s tenacity – making people talk was half of what she did, after all – and with the way he’d handled the older man. Mostly for his sake, she’d kept her own silence on the subject until Treize had approached her himself.

 

He hadn’t wanted her for sex for those first few days – she hadn’t thought he would. She’d been quite happy to be the friend she also was to him; she’d even encouraged and supported his decision to fly to Moscow during the Easter holidays despite how insanely busy they both were.

 

In retrospect, that had been a mistake. In proposing it, Liliya had hoped that time spent with Leia would allow both husband and wife to talk, grieve and move on – what had happened was upsetting, yes, but it wasn’t a tragedy, not when both Treize and Leia were young and healthy and already had one thriving child – but whilst on some level that appeared to have happened, Liliya was also sure that something else had occurred whilst Treize was at home that wasn’t so positive.

 

The other Russian officer had shown no objection to her bed when Liliya offered it on his return but there had been something about him whilst he was there that didn’t ring true. Instead of their customary playful, laughing, passionate tumbles, Treize had come across as though he were using her as a coping mechanism, seeking the mindlessness of physical release in her arms. It hadn’t made him a bad lover – she’d taught him too well for that ever to be true – but it was worrying on a number of levels, not the least of which was that he felt he needed such a natural painkiller.

 

More troubling was the knock his confidence had taken. Even in the very beginning of their relationship, Treize had been inexperienced but not shy or hesitant. These past few weeks, though, he’d been uncertain as a lover. Liliya had gained the impression that somewhere, somehow, Treize had become a little nervous of sex, subconsciously frightened of the act itself and everything that went with it. He was absolutely fine with foreplay, with heavy petting, with every trick she possessed orally and manually but the moment things strayed into the realms of full intercourse, he became skittish.

 

It was a bad thing, very bad. Treize, by nature, was a deeply sensual man and he couldn’t afford to lose contact with that part of his nature. Not only was he reliant on his sex life to release stress and burn off the more strange of his impulses and emotions, not only was it going to mean trouble with little Marquise in the future if Treize couldn’t tap one of the traits they shared most fully to understand him, but there was also the issue of his recent promotion.

 

Where Treize was going in a few days time, a loss of focus and confidence would be fatal. Liliya wasn’t about to let him put himself at that risk without doing everything she could to help.

 

The trouble was, she was running out of time. She had only tonight, most likely, to jolt Treize back into normality and she’d had to think long and hard about how to do it.

 

Fortunately, her imagination had always been one of her best traits.

 

Smiling up at Treize warmly, she held out one hand and squeezed when he caught her fingers in his. “Come with me, darling,” she bade quietly, and he obeyed without hesitation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

# 

_Early June AC191_

_Lake Victoria Military Academy_

 

“Oh, wow. There’s something you don’t see every day.”

 

Zechs’s voice, accompanied by a disbelieving whistle, broke the stillness of the morning air and made Treize flinch. Annoyed, he looked up from keying the code into the door of his office and scowled at the tall figure of his friend.

 

The blond straightened from his relaxed slouch against the wall by the door, tilting his head as he smiled cheekily. “You had an interesting evening, from the look of you,” he teased, then let his smile become a full laugh as Treize levelled him a cold look. “And don’t glare at me because your head hurts,” he chuckled.

 

“I’m not glaring at you because my head hurts,” Treize countered shortly. “I’m glaring because you deserve it and I’m not in a mood to be lenient. What do you want?” he asked as he got the door open and stepped through it.

 

Zechs followed him without waiting to be asked. “Well, at risk of sounding like an idiot,” he started, wandering aimlessly over to the desk to fiddle with one of the paperweights Treize kept on it. “And at equal risk of wildly over-stepping the bounds of protocol, the first thing I wanted was to ask if you would come out with us tonight. Seeing the state you’re in, though, I’m wondering whether to bother.” He tossed the paperweight from one hand to the other lightly, making Treize fear for the crystal for a moment, until he recalled the blonde’s reflexes and coordination. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you hung over,” Zechs admitted. “You are, aren’t you? Hung over?” he clarified.

 

Treize debated lying but settled for shrugging carelessly. “A tad,” he agreed, wondering what reaction the admission would get.

 

Less than he’d been expecting, apparently. Zechs raised a speculative, too-knowing eyebrow, then simply smiled sweetly. “Nice to know it’s possible,” he said quietly. He set the paperweight down on the desk in precisely the same spot it had come from and took a few random paces across the room. “I’ll have to see if I can manage it some time.”

 

“Being hung-over?” Treize asked, studying his friend. Even in his bleary state, he was sharp enough to notice there was something changed about the way the younger man was acting. “I would have thought you’d had more than enough experience of that by now.”

 

“Getting you drunk enough that you would be the next morning,” Zechs retaliated mildly. “Who did, or should I not ask?”

 

“You shouldn’t ask,” Treize told him, still studying. He would have said the blond was nervous, except that, if anything, Zechs’s posture was looser and more relaxed than Treize was used to. “Unless you actually want the answer.”

 

“Ah, then, I’ll live in blissful ignorance, thanks,” Zechs replied after a pause, his shoulders tightening just slightly. “I had a call from your wife this morning,” he said a moment later.

 

Treize broke off from scrutinizing his former pupil and slipped past him to scan his eyes over the folder sitting in the middle of his desk. The look of it, and the note attached to the top, let him know it contained his outstanding papers from Julian Larkspur and he silently thanked the other officer as he whisked them up and bent to slide them into his desk drawer. He trusted Zechs completely but there were still protocols to follow.

 

Bending down made his headache spike from a dull feeling of heaviness to real pain and he put his hand on the edge of his desk for balance as he straightened up again. “Was that the second thing you wanted?”

 

“What?” Zechs asked. He’d turned in the brief silence and now seemed to be taking his turn at watching the other man in the room with him. Treize couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses, but he knew he was being examined in minute detail by the way the blond was standing and the small lines between his drawn together brows.

 

“To tell me Leia had called. You said asking me to come out was the first; was that the second?”

 

The younger man shook his head as understanding dawned. “No, actually,” he said. “It was the third but I think the second really can wait for another time. Did you know Leia was coming to the graduation ceremony?” he asked.

 

Treize blinked in surprise. “No,” he answered honestly. “I missed a call from her last night whilst I was out, admittedly, but she hadn’t mentioned even thinking about it when we spoke last week.”

 

“Oh, right,” Zechs said, sounding puzzled. “She called to congratulate me on finishing my training, I think, but when I pointed out it wasn’t strictly speaking done until next week, she laughed and said she’d say it again then, in person. She seemed quite excited about the Ball.”

 

Treize stared at his former student, then lifted one hand to rub at his temples wearily. “What on earth is she thinking?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t she tell me before deciding something like that?”

 

Zechs shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” he answered bluntly. “Maybe she just wanted to see the place before we both leave it.”

 

“Maybe. Thank you for the warning, in any case,” Treize said. He rubbed at his temples again, then looked around himself blankly, knowing he had work to do and caught with thoughts of Leia coming to the Academy and what that would mean for his free time and his packing, and his interactions with his colleagues. He wondered briefly if he could head her off if he called her this morning, then rejected that idea at the thought of how disappointed she would be.

 

A quick glance across the room sealed the deal – Leia wouldn’t be the only one disappointed. A lot of the cadets would have their entire families in attendance at the graduation ceremony, why should Zechs be denied the closest thing to it he could get, just because Treize was uneasy with having his wife on-base?

 

He sighed, feeling the comfort and relaxation of his night with Liliya fade away at the added stress, leaving him with just his hangover and too much to do in too little time. He’d known the moment he woke to his alarm that morning that he’d drunk too much of Liliya’s vodka the night before, but he hadn’t really felt the full force of it until now.

 

The sound of a low chuckle from behind him made Treize turn his head to see that Zechs had moved to the window and was opening it to let the fresh morning air into the room. “That’s an interesting colour you’ve gone,” the younger man laughed. “Sit down,” he instructed.

 

Lacking a real reason for not co-operating, Treize obeyed automatically, dropping to sit in his desk chair tiredly. He closed his eyes and only knew the blond had stepped close to him by the sudden scent of him nearby. The clean, warm aroma Treize was used to from Zechs was layered with the faintest traces of stale cigarette smoke and an indefinable musk, and the change made him look up sharply as the younger man began emptying things from the pockets of the loose fatigue trousers he was wearing.

 

“Dare I ask what you were doing last night?” he enquired a little more curtly than was really warranted, seeing the pile of random things growing on his desk from the corner of one eye. It was a telling collection, confirming his suspicions all on its own – a handful of loose change, Zechs’s base I.D. card, three strips of tablets, a few crumpled flyers for various clubs, a handkerchief, a small, nondescript plastic tube, two spare hair ties and several of the little foil packages used by condom makers the world over.

 

The bright colouring and distinctive shape made them jump out at the instructor, as though deliberately drawing his attention, and he had to force himself to ignore the fact that two of the wrappers were torn open, their contents missing.

 

“Not unless you actually want the answer,” Zechs replied quietly. His words were a direct repeat of Treize’s own and his eyes, when he met the older man’s, were frank and unapologetic. He separated one of the strips of tablets out from the rest of the stuff, pushed it towards Treize, and swept everything else off the desk into one hand with the other to drop it back into his pockets. “Take a couple of those,” he suggested. “They’ll make you feel like living again. Do you want a glass of water?”

 

Treize cut his gaze away, shaking his head as he picked up the pills and felt heat touch his face. Why the hell was he embarrassed? he wondered. He’d known for months that Zechs was sexually active, had practically thrown him into bed with Otto for what he seriously suspected had been the blonde’s first time at Christmas and then gone out the next day and slipped away from his wife to buy him a box of condoms himself. Shouldn’t he be happy about seeing clear proof that Zechs was being careful in his encounters? It was only what he’d drilled into all his cadets for the last three years, and into the blond specifically and personally.

 

He had no idea why he’d suddenly come over so prudish in any case.

 

When the Lake Victoria Academy had established its early-entry Officer training course some fifteen years earlier, one of the first issues that had arisen had been the level of pastoral care offered to the students. By lowering the minimum intake age to twelve, the course was effectively replacing all the trainees’ secondary education, accelerating their learning up to university level in an exceedingly short space of time. In order to accomplish it, an awful lot of the general curriculum had to be abandoned in favour of the specialised training they were at Victoria to receive but one class offered at any ordinary school had been retained.

 

For many cadets, the three years they spent at Victoria were also the years of their physical maturation. Ignoring that fact and not teaching them the material they needed to have and were naturally curious about had rapidly led to problems and so it had been decided to incorporate it into the curriculum, in a round about fashion.

 

In the initial orientation sessions, every prospective cadet, and their guardian, was made aware of the availability of a self study program on the subject of sex and reproduction. Cadets were expected to work through it during their time at the Academy and many of them did so – in typical teenage fashion – in a matter of days.

 

New Instructors were also informed about its existence and were carefully vetted to make sure they were comfortable with the subject. This particularly applied to those also being considered as personal tutors, because on them would fall the burden of every non-Academic matter concerning the cadets in their tutor-groups, including their progress with the self-study kit and any personal issues or questions they had. It had been only logical to make it the tutor’s job because, as Treize had been blithely informed by the officer he’d replaced, voices broke, periods started, wet dreams happened and the personal tutor dealt with it all, anyway, so why not make it an official responsibility and give them the tools to answer the questions?

 

In the past three years, Treize had been responsible for dozens of cadets from five different classes, and had learned that his predecessor had been dead on right in his warnings. He’d lost count of the number of times a horribly embarrassed trainee had banged on his office door and shyly asked if they could ‘ask him something personal.’

 

In response, he’d covered any number of topics and answered a thousand different questions, soothing each cadet past their particular crisis in a manner that was both forthright and friendly.

 

It was a reflection of his nature that his advice was often weighted towards the practical, unless the question was directly about the religious or ethical implications of something. Nor did he waste time with ideas he considered ridiculous – the notion of trying to tell career-military teenage boys that abstinence was a viable option was about the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life. Instead, he spent far more time than was required driving home the message that sex was natural and healthy, damn good fun and possible in any number of ways and combinations, all of which were perfectly acceptable provided they were acted upon in a safe, sane and consenting fashion.

 

And it wasn’t even as if Zechs hadn’t been one of the cadets he’d taught – he had been, and in far more detail than most. Unlike other cadets, Zechs didn’t have parents and siblings to turn to when they went home for the holidays. For him, Treize filled every trusted adult position such information could be expected to come from – he was father, teacher and older brother in one go. The blond might not have asked very many questions over the years, especially once he had access to the Academy’s study kit but, in contrast to Treize himself – who’d fallen within the later end of the normal age range for most of his development – Zechs had been comparatively precocious for his age, necessitating some fairly frank discussions between the friends even before they became cadet and tutor.

 

Why, then, was he turning colours at the sight of a few condoms? It was annoying, especially when Zechs himself was totally unfazed.

 

Treize had no idea, but the sight of the empty wrappers had at least given him his answer to the puzzle of Zechs’s behaviour. The relaxed posture and languid air the younger man was displaying were exactly the same as those Treize had been feeling all morning. Otto, it seemed, had been right.

 

Taking a steeling breath and finding a smile, the teacher lifted his head and raised a knowing eyebrow. The boy was sixteen, a graduate officer and, as Treize had repeatedly thought to himself, not really a child anymore. Time to start treating him accordingly. “Whatever it was, you look like you enjoyed it,” he commented softly.

 

Zechs started at the words, caught off guard by their teasing nature. He was used to Treize reacting badly to any evidence of his sex life, not tweaking him with it. “It had its charms,” he admitted cautiously, looking wary.

 

“I’m sure he did,” the Instructor dared, and had to fight to keep from laughing outright when Zechs’s jaw literally dropped in shock. “If you can comment on my evening, I can comment on yours,” he said, smirking.

 

There was another moment of Zechs gaping like a landed fish, and then the boy closed his mouth, shook his head and threw his hands into the air in defeat. “Just when I think I’ve got a handle on how you’re going to react to something, you pull something like this,” he muttered.

 

“Unpredictability is the mark of a good commander,” Treize returned smoothly. “What did you say about inviting me out?” he asked, deciding he liked bantering with his friend like this.

 

“I’m going out with Otto and Noin and some of the others tonight. We’re supposed to be asking some of the instructors if they want to come as well. I said I’d ask you. No one else would dare.” Zechs rattled off his explanation hurriedly, scowling as he gazed at his friend.

 

“Your classmates are all really that intimidated by me?” the instructor asked, smiling.

 

“Apparently.” Zechs was studying him again, eyes intent behind his glasses. “Damn,” he said with no warning. “The rumour mill was right, wasn’t it?”

 

Treize raised an eyebrow at the question but ignored it as though it hadn’t been asked. “Where are you going, and who else have you asked?” he wondered. He was inclined to say yes, if only for the sake of the tradition one of Zechs’s friends must have been told about, but not if he would be the only adult in amongst hordes of teenagers.

 

“Noin’s asking Valadin, Otto said he’d try Larkspur. Some of the others have gone to their personal tutors or favourite teachers so there should be quite a few of you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have no idea where we’re going – I figure we’ll decide when we get there.” Zechs tilted his head. “Treize, answer the question,” he pressed.

 

“Impatient,” Treize chided. “As long as I’m not the only officer, I’ll come,” he agreed.

 

“Not that question.” Zechs shook his head. “Where are you going when you leave here?” he quizzed. “There have been rumours flying about for weeks. I wasn’t sure I believed them but they’re true, aren’t they?”

 

“That would depend on what they say I’ll be doing,” Treize hedged. He spread his hands, delaying as he thought of a way to phrase the answer to what was a very awkward question. “I haven’t heard them, understandably, so I can’t comment on the accuracy but I can tell you that any information you might have heard is incomplete, at the least.” He paused again, then shrugged lightly. “You should bear in mind that the exact details of an Officer’s orders are always sealed from public record until their effective date,” he reminded, hoping the subtle hint would be enough. “Especially when they contain strategic or controversial information.”

 

He waited until Zechs’s face shifted to stunned comprehension, then looked away. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow, in your counselling session,” he promised.

 

For a moment, Treize thought Zechs was going to push the issue but then the younger man nodded his acceptance. “All right,” he agreed. “Tomorrow, then.” He stopped, yawned, hurriedly covering his mouth with one hand, and then shook himself. “Oh, excuse me,” he apologised. “Time I went to bed, I think.”

 

Treize blinked in surprise. “You haven’t yet?” he asked. “I wondered why you smelled of cigarette smoke.”

 

Zechs shook his head. “Not yet. By the time we got back and I’d seen everyone else to bed and what-have-you, there was no point. I wanted to catch you before you started work for the day, and you were later than I thought you were going to be.”

 

“Ah,” Treize agreed. “Go, then. Sleep. What time do you want me this evening?”

 

“Eight-ish, but don’t worry about being prompt. Someone always runs late and we’ll wait for you if we have to.” The blond yawned again as he finished his sentence, then gave a little wave with one hand as he turned on his heel and headed for the door. “Sorry, but I’m going to fall asleep standing up in a minute,” he explained. “I’ll see you later.”

 

He opened the door to Treize’s office before the teacher could come to his feet to get it for him as courtesy demanded and disappeared through it, leaving Treize to stare at the back of the door in bemusement. What, he wondered, had he just agreed to? The last time he’d been anywhere near one of Zechs’s ‘nights out’ it had been a disaster.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The t-shirts are all real. Jut sayin'....

# Early June AC 191

# Lake Victoria Military Academy

 

 

It was a little after ten to eight when Treize let himself into the cadet dorm building that was home to his friend, wincing a little when the heavy doors opened to let him hear the cacophony of sound coming from inside it.

 

The barracks were never quiet buildings, even in the dead of night. In the ordinary course of events, some three hundred cadets occupied each of the long, low, rectangular dorms, crammed into their two-person bunks, and with that many people in so tight a space, it was a virtual certainty that someone would be up and moving about. Still, it was normally a controlled racket – which this definitely wasn’t.

 

Teenagers milled about the halls in various states of dress, some obviously ready to go out, others in their nightclothes or other random outfits thrown together. Others shouted questions and answers back and forward between rooms, or shrieked, or laughed at something they’d just been told, gesticulating wildly. A third group seemed to be in control of the multitudes of radios and laptop computers that were dotted about the building, blasting music into the air around them with no thought for the ears of their neighbours or for the fact that no-one was playing the same style or song as anyone else. The whole thing was chaos.

 

Trying not to show that he was cringing at every turn – surely to God he hadn’t behaved like this as a cadet? – Treize threaded his way through the masses until he reached the corner of the second floor that housed Zechs and Otto. It was marginally more tranquil than elsewhere and Treize sighed in relief as he banged on the door.

 

It was opened almost immediately but instead of either Otto or Zechs holding the door, Treize found himself looking into the even, bemused features of Julian Larkspur.

 

He raised an eyebrow in surprise when the older officer grinned wickedly and stepped back to let him into the room with the words, “Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,” then turned to look over his shoulder and called, “Otto, I have another volunteer for your t-shirt collection!”

 

“I beg your pardon?” Treize asked, as the door was closed solidly behind him.

 

“Otto went shopping this afternoon,” Larkspur explained, ushering Treize across the room. “He decided our little night out needed a theme but he got a touch carried away. Just nod, smile and agree – it’ll be quicker.”

 

“Agree to what?” the redhead demanded, trying not to resist too obviously.

 

“Whatever he wants you to wear,” Julian answered, shrugging. “Really, it’s not worth protesting. He’ll only argue you into submission.”

 

Prompted by the words, Treize glanced at the [other man's clothes](http://www.cafepress.com/mf/18354145/prefer-men-out-of-uniform_tshirt?productId=120950932), raising one eyebrow at the colour of his close fitting t-shirt and the second at the slogan printed across the chest.

 

 

“Good Lord,” the younger officer remarked. The bold black writing read, ‘I prefer men _out_ of uniform!’ and as for the colour…. “I am not wearing anything pink!”

 

Larkspur laughed at him good-naturedly. “God, no,” he agreed. “Not with your hair.”

 

Treize had more been thinking that he wouldn’t have been caught dead in pink under any circumstances, whether it would have clashed with his hair or not. It wasn’t a colour a man should ever wear, as far as he was concerned, but he held his tongue and settled for nodding.

 

“Excellent,” Julian said. “Otto, suggestions please!”

 

From the other side of his bed, which was currently covered in clothes, Otto looked up, looked at Treize and went wide-eyed. “Bloody hell, no!” he spluttered. “Sir, are you trying to get me killed?” he asked Larkspur. “I wouldn’t dare!”

 

“Oh, come on,” the Engineer encouraged. “I’m sure Khushrenada will be good sport about it.” He looked at Treize. “Won’t you?”

 

Treize merely smiled, sweetly.

 

“See?” Otto said quickly. “I like my balls where they are, thank you. Besides…,” his alarmed expression faded into an impish grin as he tilted his head to one side and looked Treize up and down blatantly, “…look at him. Why on earth would I want to change that?”

 

There was a moment’s silence in which both other men scrutinised him closely and Treize began to feel seriously uncomfortable, and then Larkspur nodded. “You might have a point,” he told Otto reflectively. “You do dress well, for a straight man,” he said to Treize.

 

Treize glanced down at his simple – if expensive and perfectly tailored – outfit of shirt, slacks, shoes and belt, and frowned. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose, although I have a new appreciation for how the rabbit in the headlights feels.”

 

Otto blushed, suddenly realising what he’d said and to whom; Julian laughed and clapped Treize on the shoulder. “I’ll bet you do,” he agreed. “Sorry for that,” he said contritely.

 

Treize shook his head, dismissing the sincere sounding apology. “May I ask where Zechs is?” he enquired, as it occurred to him he hadn’t yet seen the blond and that there was no real trace of him.

Otto gestured over his shoulder at the bathroom door. “He’s getting ready, though what’s taking him so long, I don’t….”

 

The dark-haired cadet stopped mid-sentence as the bathroom door clicked open and Zechs stepped out.

 

“And speak of the devil,” Otto continued smoothly, barely missing a beat, “and he shall come. Will you always do that on command, love?” he asked the blond, catching him totally off-guard.

 

Larkspur snickered whilst Zechs cast his roommate an evil look. “Shut up,” he warned the other boy flatly. “Sorry I wasn’t here to let you in,” the blond added, addressing the words to Treize. “Otto wasn’t too awful about insisting on the stupid t-shirt thing, was he? I told him to leave you alone.”

 

“He did,” Treize confirmed. “Although I’m informed it’s because he doesn’t want to alter the way I look rather than any instruction of yours.”

 

Zechs blinked. “Fair enough,” he replied, a half-second too slowly. Treize couldn’t tell for certain, of course – Zechs was wearing his darkened glasses – but he got the distinct impression that the blond had just given him a lightning version of Otto’s blatant eyeing.

 

He chose to ignore it as he looked at the younger man’s own clothing, surprised to see it was remarkably similar to his own, save for being pale blues and greys, rather than black. “Do I want to know how you got away with it?” he wondered.

 

Zechs sighed, and unfastened the top few buttons of his shirt. “I didn’t,” he confessed. “But at least my t-shirt was mine to begin with.”

 

Treize raised an eyebrow as he read the words, ‘Good boys don’t ask. Bad boys find out for themselves!’ absently noting that the grey print on a clinging white background would work as well with Zechs’s grey trousers as the icy blue shirt did. “Was it now?” he asked softly. “Such a shame you’ve always been a model student, then, isn’t it?”

 

Laughter bubbled out of the blond. “Like hell I have!” he protested. “But before you object too much, it was either this or Otto was going to choose. You, ah, really don’t want to know what that one said,” he muttered, blushing.

 

Treize smiled affectionately. “Don’t I?”

 

“Oh, but you do!” Otto interrupted. “I bought it particularly with Zechs in mind but he refused to wear it.” He crossed the room as he spoke, letting Treize get a first good look at what the dark-haired boy was wearing. “So I am, instead.”

 

Treize’s expression blanked into utter shock. “Good God!” he choked.

 

Otto’s t-shirt was a lovely shade of dark-red, short-sleeved and neat, perfectly acceptable except for the slogan on it, which read, ‘[Let got of my ears, I know what I'm doing](http://www.cafepress.com/mf/18768704/let-go-of-my-ears_tshirt?productId=399738841)!’ He turned as Treize blinked, showing the printed image of a stick-figure man kneeling in front of another standing - just in case it hadn't been obvious what the reference was.

 

Blush deepening, Zechs threw Otto an absolutely killing glare, silently promising every level of hell he could personally summon, and then shook his head. “I didn’t think the colour would suit me,” he tried weakly.

 

“The colour, eh?” Larkspur teased back when Treize didn’t respond, then deliberately looked at his watch. “Would you look at the time? We’ll be keeping everyone else waiting. Move it, gentlemen!”

 

 

************************

# Early June AC 191

# Kampala City - Uganda

 

 

“You don’t have to,” Zechs said quietly, so quietly that Treize doubted anyone but himself had heard the younger man. “You really don’t.”

 

The officer looked over at his younger friend, wondering when Zechs had moved close enough to him that they were almost touching. “I know,” he replied, just as softly.

 

“I should have thought before I asked you to come,” the blond murmured. “It’s rare Otto and I go out now and don’t end up down here by the end of the evening. It just didn’t occur to me we would with other people along.”

 

Treize frowned slightly, looking at Zechs closely in the poor light. The boy’s eyes had fixed on Treize’s as soon as his roommate had suggested continuing their evening in Kampala’s gay village and hadn’t really moved much since. He hadn’t said anything until they’d been within spitting distance of the clubs, but Treize was getting the impression that he’d been asking the same questions silently for the entire walk.

 

“Zechs, it’s all right,” he reassured. “It’s a logical enough decision.” It was, but he didn’t think that was helping his friend much. “Really. There are six of us, and of those six, three of you are gay and Noin is so used to being with you and Otto that she’s completely happy being here. There’s only myself and Liliya who might have issue and I promise we’re both perfectly capable of walking away and going somewhere else, or going back to base, if we decide we want to.”

 

“I know, but….” Zechs trailed off, mid-sentence and shrugged unhappily.

 

Their party had started out quite numerous, with half a dozen instructors joining almost thirty of their pupils on their jaunt into town. It had taken some doing to get everyone together but they’d managed and found themselves in a little bar off a side street in Kampala just after nine.

 

It was nowhere Treize had been before, though Liliya said she’d been before a few times. The cadets had explained that it was where they usually started their evenings; the staff knew they were all underage but didn’t give them difficulty over it as long as no-one got too drunk or caused trouble.

 

Bemused by this insight into cadet life, Treize had placidly sat with his former students as they nattered and drank, mostly talking to Liliya and the other officers but keeping a weather eye on Zechs.

 

To his surprise, it appeared that the younger man had learned how to drink without landing himself in a coma, pacing himself skilfully so that by the time the group began to fragment up to go on to preferred individual pastimes, he was not sober but not drunk, either. He was, Treize thought, watching him, pleasantly tipsy.

 

Otto’s suggestion that they wander down to the gay village had jarred Zechs from his fuzzy state a little, forcing him to concentrate as he tried to bail his teacher and friend out of something he, mistakenly, believed Treize would hate.

 

He might have had cause to think that, of course. The one and only time Treize and Zechs had been in the same gay club, Treize had reacted spectacularly badly. That he’d been reacting to specific things he’d witnessed and not to the environment wasn’t quite computing for Zechs, but then, Treize had only agreed to come out tonight as part of his plan to finally convince his younger friend that he didn’t have an issue with him being gay. If they were going to maintain their relationship now that Zechs was moving away from needing Treize as a parental figure, then they had to be able to share some aspects of their private lives and that was never going to happen if Zechs didn’t feel he could include the older man in his social activities with his other friends.

 

“But, what?” he asked the blond now. “I’m not going to lose my temper with you again. Keep me from seeing anything I shouldn’t and I’ll be fine, I promise.”

 

Zechs tensed a little and Treize sighed. “I do actually have gay friends other than you, you know,” he informed the younger man, voice still low. “Major Larkspur, for one. I keep telling you it’s not an issue….”

 

“I know,” Zechs interrupted. “I’m just…. Ignore me, will you? I’m nervous, that’s all. We haven’t done anything like this before and Otto and that bloody t-shirt stunt knocked me before we started. I’m going to kill him for that when I get him alone, I swear,” he said, sounding ticked off. “I told him not to show that to you and instead he goes and wears the damned thing!”

 

“I’d gathered you were less than pleased with him on the way here,” Treize chuckled, recalling the vicious tongue-lashing Zechs had bestowed on his friend. The blond had pulled his roommate back a good few feet behind the rest of the group as they walked but Treize’s hearing was superb and he’d still caught snippets and odd phrases. ‘…not fucking funny, you prick…’ and ‘… why the hell am I still talking to you…’ had featured quite prominently. “Admittedly, the implications of it were rather more than I ever needed to know,” the older man confessed.

 

Zechs blushed, the stain of colour obvious even in the poor lighting. “Which is pretty much why I told him not to do it,” he answered. “Otto still can’t get his head round the idea that all this is… hard for you,” the younger man added softly. “He thinks that, since you were fine with the two of us at Christmas, there’s no problem at all and that he can be as blunt with you as he is with me. Trying to get it through to him that maybe that’s not the case is like talking to a Leo.”

 

The mental image of Zechs shouting at an Otto-sized mobile suit made Treize smile a little but the boy’s words were too disturbing for it really to form. Catching Zechs’s arm in one hand, Treize drew him a few paces away from everyone else in the little group, into the shadow of the wall of the club. Zechs blinked at him in surprise, but he followed the tug on his arm willingly enough.

 

“Nothing about you being gay is ‘hard’ for me, Zechs,” Treize insisted quietly, shifting his grip on the younger man from his elbow to his shoulder and bringing his other hand up to match it on the other side. “Please start believing that. If I had an issue with it, I would have told you by now, don’t you think?”

 

The blond nodded. “I suppose so,” he agreed. “I told you, just ignore me for a while.”

 

Treize smiled. “All right,” he consented. He let his hands tighten for a moment, then took a step back. He opened his mouth to say something else and stopped when a piercing whistle cut through the air.

 

Both men turned to look in the direction of the whistle, finding that Otto and Larkspur were standing a few paces away with speculative looks on their faces. Which of them had whistled, Treize had no idea, but the intent was clear.

 

Otto tilted his head and held his hand out to his bunkmate, beckoning him with a smile that might have been apologetic, leaving Julian to raise an enquiring eyebrow at Treize as Zechs shook his head in resignation and went to his friend.

 

“Should I ask what that was about?” the Engineer asked, turning to watch with his colleague as Zechs shoved at Otto a little too hard for it to be playful and then took his hand willingly enough, scowling only until Otto looked up at him pleadingly.

 

“Only Zechs fretting,” Treize replied, amused by the way Otto was manipulating the blond. Zechs had declared every intention of being angry with his friend for the rest of the evening but it didn’t look much like he was going to be able to follow through in the face of Otto’s ‘kicked puppy’ act.

 

“Oh? Worried about letting you see what he gets up to of an evening, is he?” Larkspur chuckled.

 

Treize shook his head. “I have a very good idea of what he gets up to, thank you. He was worried I wouldn’t be comfortable being here, that’s all.”

 

The older officer raised an eyebrow. “Considerate of him,” he said neutrally. “I’ll admit I was about to ask you the same thing. Valadin seems fine, but that’s Valadin.”

 

“Do all gay men assume the straight ones are frightened by them?” Treize asked conversationally.

 

Julian frowned for a moment. “Sorry?” he asked, then shook his head. “I wasn’t implying you were frightened, Khushrenada, just that you might find the idea of another man coming on to you a bit unpleasant.”

 

“Should I? Would you be bothered by a woman approaching you?” Treize laughed softly. “Aside from anything else, I’m not arrogant enough to assume that every gay man I meet will find me attractive.”

 

“Strangely enough, yes,” the other man answered, “I do find women making a pass at me uncomfortable. Most gay men of my acquaintance do. That’s why I was asking if you were all right. As for not assuming….” The engineer suddenly grinned wickedly. “Don’t assume we don’t find you attractive, either.”

 

Treize’s eyes widened in surprise, but before Larkspur could really begin to laugh at the expression, the redhead had squared his shoulders, turned on his heel and followed his students to the door of the club.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

_ Early June AC 191 _

_ Lake Victoria Military Academy _

 

 

Treize knocked on Zechs’s door the next morning a little after eleven, wondering whether the younger man was awake yet and what state he would be in if he was. It had been a late night for both of them by the time they’d returned to the base but Treize was willing to bet that it had been later for the blond than it had been for him. He, after all, had been in bed and asleep half an hour after getting in; Zechs, most likely, had not. Not if Treize was any judge of the way Otto had been looking at him for half the evening and the way the two of them had been carrying on in the club before their party left it.

 

Treize had found himself laughing at the two of them dancing, smiling tolerantly at them kissing against one of the walls and raising a curious, slightly scandalised eyebrow at the heavier petting they’d indulged in on one of the couches in a shadowy corner at the back of the club. When they’d disappeared from view altogether into the back rooms, Treize had turned a careful blind eye and sent Julian Larkspur to fetch them when it was time to leave. If there was any truth to the inferences Treize might have been able to draw about his surrogate brother from the slogan on Otto’s t-shirt, then he really didn’t want to know.

 

It was to be hoped, though, that the two younger man hadn’t stayed up too late. Half the reason Treize was knocking on Zechs’s door was to surprise him, and it wouldn’t do for him to be in too poor a state for it.

 

Receiving no answer to his first knock, Treize raised his hand again, hitting the wood of the door with more force. When there was still no answer, the Instructor cast an impish look at his companion, and then raised his voice.

 

“Room Inspection!”

 

The words caused a hastily bitten off giggle from behind him and a sudden flurry of noise from inside the dorm room.

 

The door swung open barely thirty seconds later, to reveal a flustered looking Zechs wearing only a rumpled t-shirt over a loose pair of pyjama pants. He snapped to attention automatically, before recognising his guest with a widening of his eyes.

 

“Bastard!” the blond swore, reaching out and shoving the officer in the chest hard enough to knock him a pace. “That was totally unnecessary!”

 

Treize smirked unrepentantly. “You weren’t answering.”

 

“And it didn’t cross your mind that there might have been a reason for that?!”

 

“Of course not.” Treize shrugged lazily. “I assumed you’d want to say hello.”

 

“Hello?” Zechs asked, puzzled, then blinked in delight as a tall, slim figure appeared from behind his teacher. “Leia!”

 

“Hello, Zechs. Did we surprise you?” Treize’s wife held out her hands as she stepped around her husband, smiling and beautiful. Zechs took them in his own and tugged lightly, drawing the woman against him so that they could hug.

 

Leia returned the embrace with genuine enthusiasm before stepping back and catching the boy’s hands again. “I haven’t seen you since Christmas,” she said softly, looking him up and down. “My goodness, you’ve grown,” she teased, laughing musically when Zechs coloured with embarrassment. She glanced over her shoulder at her husband, then back to the younger man. “Is he taller than you now?” she asked Treize.

 

“Almost,” Treize replied cheerfully.

 

Leia ran her eyes over Zechs once more before stepping back and letting her hands drop.

 

“Weren’t you supposed to be arriving tomorrow?” Zechs asked suddenly.

 

It was Leia’s turn to colour slightly. “The day after, actually,” she admitted. “But I was so eager to see you both again, and so curious about this place, that I called Treize late last night and caught an earlier flight. I arrived about half an hour ago.”

 

Zechs let his surprise at Leia’s impulsive actions show on his face as he cut his gaze to his teacher’s for a moment, realising that Leia must have spoken to Treize after they’d gotten home from the city the night before. He couldn’t help but wonder what sort of reception she, and her idea, had received. Treize hadn’t been entirely sober by the time they’d turned in and, unless Zechs had misread things, hadn’t been too pleased at having Leia on-base at all the day before, even for the day of the graduation ceremony. Having her here a full three days before any other civilian guest was going to draw a fair amount of attention to her. Certainly, it was going to make it harder for Treize to keep the fact of his marriage a secret, to say nothing of how it would interrupt his work.

 

As if to confirm Zechs’s suspicions, Treize met his eyes and then shot a cool glance at the top of his wife’s head.

 

Seeing it, Zechs had to cover a swift wince. He’d seen Treize bestow that look on one too many an errant cadet not to know what it presaged. His friend might be being the picture of charm towards his wife but he wasn’t pleased with her.

 

Trying to mitigate some of the damage Leia was going to do to Treize’s schedule with her presence, and, therefore, some of the bad temper she was in danger of provoking, Zechs ran a hand back through his hair, straightening it idly as he glanced into the middle distance for a moment. “What time are you scheduled to start the final interviews this afternoon?” he asked, looking back at the older man. “I know mine is at 16:00 and Otto’s is 16:30, but are we the first or are there others?”

 

“There are the others. The first is at 13:00,” Treize replied quietly, letting his gaze soften a little as he caught the gist of where Zechs was going with his question. “And I have meeting at 12:15 with Major Valadin.”

 

Zechs nodded. “Good. I have time to get dressed, then.” He found a pleased grin. “If you can just hang on for ten minutes, I’ll throw some clothes on and meet you somewhere.” He switched his gaze back to Leia, who was glancing between them with an expression of confusion that was rapidly becoming one of upset.

 

“You have work to do?” she asked Treize, her voice shot through with her sudden worry.

 

Treize raised an eyebrow at her. “Of course I do,” he replied calmly. “I do have to earn my paycheque, my dear,” he quipped, a smile touching his lips that wasn’t entirely faked.

 

“Oh.” The blonde woman bowed her head, her whole body showing her sudden feelings of guilt and remorse in its lines. “I didn’t realise,” she said softly. “When I spoke to Zechs, he said he had nothing to do until the graduation ceremony, and I just thought….” She trailed off mid-sentence.

 

“You thought that if he had nothing to do, then I must have nothing to do as well,” Treize finished for her. He put a hand out to her as he spoke, touching her shoulder gently and turning her to face him. “I understand why you’d think that, my love, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. I’m actually rather busy.”

 

Leia had lifted her head at his touch but her gaze was still on the floor and now she bit her lower lip for a moment in a characteristic nervous gesture. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I can go home if….”

 

Treize shook his head immediately, his annoyance softening in the face of his wife’s genuine distress. His hand tightened on her shoulder and he drew her into him, embracing her gently. “Don’t be silly,” he chided quietly. “You’re here now, and it’s always a pleasure to see you again. As long as you don’t mind me leaving you in Zechs’s capable hands for the afternoon, we’ll manage quite nicely. It won’t be more than a moment to organise a room for you and I will be free this evening.” The officer looked across at the younger man, including him in what he said next with the look. “Perhaps we could go to dinner somewhere in the city?”

 

Zechs nodded, immediately, abandoning whatever other plans he might have had in favour of his friend’s suggestion. He had to hide a smile at the thought of how helpless Treize would be if Leia ever learned what kind of power over him she had. One sad-eyed look, and he’d gone from justifiably ticked off to conciliatory in the extreme.

 

“Leave it with me,” Zechs told the older man over Leia’s head. “I’ll make some calls while I’m getting dressed and see what I can come up with. It shouldn’t be too hard to find somewhere decent at this time of year.” He shrugged, and then poked Leia in the side with one finger, making her start involuntarily. “Care to spend the afternoon getting a VIP tour of the base, Duchess?” he tweaked.

 

Leia glanced at him uncertainly. “If it won’t be a problem?” she asked hesitantly.

 

Zechs grinned. “No problem,” he promised. “You’re his wife,” he explained, pointing at Treize over her shoulder. “There’s no such thing as ‘problem’ for you here, trust me.” He raised an eyebrow, speculatively. “Especially at the moment. Everyone else seems to be scared of him all of a sudden, and he won’t tell me why.”

 

Treize returned the expression with a knowing smirk accompanying it. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied.

 

Zechs scowled. “Yes, but….” he started, and the subsided when Treize shook his head silently. “Damn,” he said, frustrated.

 

Treize chuckled warmly, shaking his head. “Can’t wait five hours…,” he muttered. “Honestly!” He slipped an arm around his wife’s waist and drew her to him. “I’ll go and arrange a room for Leia and we’ll meet you down in the quadrangle in quarter of an hour. Will that suit you?”

 

Zechs nodded. “Perfectly.” He lifted a hand to give Leia a little wave as he stepped back into his room. “See you shortly!”

 

Leia smiled at him, returned the wave, and then moved away at Treize’s urging.

 

 

********************

 

 

Treize and Leia were standing together in the sunlight-flooded quad when Zechs made his way out there a little while later, looking almost as though someone had framed them for publicity shots against the pristine white stone of the Academy’s main building. Even Zechs could tell that they made a good pair – Treize, tall and handsome in his customised uniform, and Leia, a head and a half shorter, looking charmingly pretty in her powder blue linen dress, her golden hair curled neatly under her brimmed sun-hat. Zechs only hoped she’d had the sense to apply sunscreen or she was going to burn. Her bare legs and arms might be appropriate given the heat but the sun was vicious and she was a colonial who’d only ever lived in Moscow once Earthside.

 

The two of them were talking softly to one another and, as Zechs drew closer, he could hear that they were speaking in the French-derived patois that constituted as much of a native tongue as Leia had beyond the standard English. Zechs wondered when Treize had learned to convert the fluent command of true French that was his legacy from his Parisian mother to the colonial dialect of L3.

 

Leia spotted him approaching before Zechs could catch enough of what they were saying to make sense of it, breaking off the conversation to wave at him in greeting.

 

Zechs picked up his pace for the last few steps, arriving at her side with a flourish of a bit of paper to Treize, who took it with a bemused expression, read it in a single glance and nodded his understanding and acceptance of the brief lines of text written on it.

 

“Dinner reservations,” Zechs explained to Leia, who was looking at him curiously. “8.30 this evening.” He grinned. “The maitre d was, and I quote, ‘honoured and thrilled’ at the booking and promised that ‘everything will be absolute perfection’ in the worst French accent I have ever heard.”

 

Treize snorted. “There’s my mother’s legacy again,” he chuckled, and then turned to his wife. “Right, my dear, I must be going, so I will leave you to Zechs and see you later.”

 

Leia smiled up at him charmingly. “Thank you,” she replied softly.

 

Treize returned the smile before looking over her head at Zechs. “16:00,” he reminded. “I’ll overlook your standard of dress under the circumstances.”

 

Zechs brought his heels together and nodded sharply. “Yes, sir,” he replied smartly, causing Leia to look between the two of them with curious eyes. It was, Zechs supposed as Treize turned on one booted foot to go back to his office, yet another thing Leia was going to be exposed to by being here early. She didn’t know her husband in his Officer guise at all and she’d never seen him interact with Zechs in that capacity. Zechs just hoped her presence wouldn’t interrupt the carefully crafted balance he and Treize had built.

 

Forcing such thoughts from his mind, Zechs offered his arm to Leia as she tore her gaze from Treize’s figure and looked to him instead, smiling gallantly when she took it. “Come on, Duchess,” he said warmly. “Let’s go and spook some people.”

 

 

***********************

 

 

Zechs had thought fast and hard whilst he was readying himself for the day, using the time whilst he was in shower and drying his hair to bounce ideas off an amused Otto as to what he should show to Leia during their impromptu tour and what order he should show them in.

 

He supposed he could just have followed the standard tour given to visiting dignitaries but, for some reason, he wanted to give Leia a more personal, in-depth experience than that. Unfortunately, the only example he had of something like that – his own tour of the Academy at Treize’s hands five years before – had been geared for someone looking to enter the Academy themselves, including quite a bit of technical information and hands on activity that wouldn’t suit this occasion at all.

 

He’d struggled until Otto had chuckled at him and fondly told him he was an idiot. Leia, the other boy had insisted, wasn’t interested in the Academy, she was interested in Treize. Firing ranges and assault courses would bore her because all she really wanted was to know what her husband had been doing with himself all those days he hadn’t been at home with her during their marriage.

 

Zechs had blinked at him from under wet bangs, and then leaned down and kissed his roommate thoroughly and slowly, leaving him flushed and breathless as he turned away to get dressed, resisting the temptation to continue what they’d started the night before.

 

Otto had been right, though. Leia’s every other question as Zechs guided her around the Academy grounds was about her husband, about what he did all day and which parts of the Academy he used most. She was enthralled by everything Zechs showed her, nodding and smiling eagerly until they came to the lecture room Treize had commanded so often.

 

As they walked into the room, she lost her smile and slowed her pace, looking around herself with wide eyes as Zechs began to describe the complex theory of warfare Treize had taught. There was no way to explain all he’d learned from the older man in the last three years – everything from the historical works of theorists such as Clausewitz and Jomini to the more practical ideas such as Bounding Overwatch formations and the OODA loop – in less than ten minutes, but Zechs tried.

 

Or, rather, he tried until he realised Leia wasn’t really listening to him as she trailed her fingers over the Instructor’s console at the front of the room. She’d stopped by the desk, her blue eyes distant, her attention so obviously elsewhere that Zechs had no choice but to splutter to a rather abrupt and undignified halt, confused by her and not sure what to do or say next.

 

His confusion grew when Leia turned from the desk and walked towards the rows of benches, sinking into a seat in the second row and leaning forward onto the foldout table pensively.

 

“Is something wrong?” Zechs asked hesitantly, when she hadn’t moved after a few seconds had passed. Her sudden change in demeanour was worrying him. Had he walked her too far in the vicious heat? She was a civilian and unused to the climate but Zechs hadn’t thought to stop his tour at any point in the last two hours let her sit down and take a drink of something.

 

Leia looked over at him blankly for a moment, then smiled sadly. “I’m trying to imagine it, and I can’t,” she said quietly.

 

“Trying to imagine what?” Zechs asked, frowning.

 

“Standing behind that desk and giving a lecture to a full room. Sitting here and listening to one.” Leia shrugged. “How many times has that happened, do you think?” she asked.

 

“Has what happened?” Zechs wondered. He took a few paces closer to her, trying to understand what she was asking him.

 

“You and my husband, in this room.” Leia looked away from him again as she spoke, her eyes searching the corners of the room, and then she shook her head and stood up. “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “I’m just being silly.” She slipped her hand through Zechs’s arm as she drew level with him and smiled up at him. “Where to next?”

 

“The suit sheds,” Zechs answered automatically. “Leia, Treize was one of my primary instructors. I’ve listened to him lecture hundreds of times. Why did you want to know?”

 

“It’s a part of him I don’t understand,” she said quietly, then shrugged delicately. “It doesn’t matter,” she dismissed. “Come on. I want to see everything else and you’re running out of time.”

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

# Early June AC 191

# Lake Victoria Military Academy

 

 

Leia’s reaction to the suit sheds was nothing short of breathless, helpless amazement. Zechs wished Treize could have seen it – he suspected the older man would have liked knowing his wife had the makings of a true mecha fan.

 

The sheds at Lake Victoria were vast, containing hundreds of suits of various makes and models, everything from stripped down and battered old training units to gleaming examples of suits so new they were still in testing. Zechs had flown nearly all of them in the last three years and had long since gotten past havening any reaction to the sheds other than a little thrill in the pit of his stomach but Leia’s wide-eyed wonder brought back all his own love for the giant machines and sent him off into an eager, babbled recitation as they meandered around the hangers.

 

They were standing at the foot of one of the current combat-model Leo’s, Zechs in the middle of explaining that whilst this was the same type of suit Treize had been piloting just before he and Leia had first met, there had been some major improvements on the design since then, when a dry cough made them both jump.

 

“Very impressive, Mr Marquise. Might I ask why you are in here?”

 

Zechs’s head whipped round at the words, three years of practice making his spine straighten and his hand lift for a salute automatically. “Major!” he exclaimed.

 

“Indeed.” Liliya Valadin took the single step forward she needed to come fully into the light. “I asked you a question, I believe.”

 

“With respect, ma’am,” Zechs replied, feeling his pulse rate begin to slow back to normal. “I was escorting Duchess Khushrenada on a tour of the facilities. At her husband’s request,” he added, almost as an afterthought, unable to resist the dig. “Duchess Leia Barton Khushrenada, might I introduce Major Liliya Valadin, the Academy’s Covert Operations Instructor. Major Valadin, Duchess Khushrenada.”

 

Zechs made the introduction and then let the room fall into silence, watching the two women size each other up and wondering what would happen next. Correct protocol required Major Valadin to both curtsey in deference and to allow the younger woman to speak first but Zechs would have been willing to bet just about anything on the certainty that Valadin would ignore at least one of those requirements, and not just because she was that sort of woman.

 

“We’ve met before,” Valadin said, after a moment. Her expression was perfectly sweet as she ignored protocol completely and stepped forward to offer Leia her hand. “I doubt you remember me, Duchess, but Treize invited me to your wedding.”

 

Leia blinked, hearing something in Valadin’s tone that she couldn’t place, and then smiled suddenly, all warmth and light. “Oh, of course!” she exclaimed. “How silly of me! It’s only that you look so very different out of uniform,” she explained, reaching out to take Valadin’s hand between both of her own, all for the world as though she were greeting a long lost relative.

 

The Major smiled, an expression that was as much poison as Leia’s was sweet. “Well, so does Sasha,” she said, a breath of laughter in her voice. “The needs of the service, I’m afraid.”

 

Zechs winced, caught between hating Valadin for her games and admiring her for them. God, but the woman was a clever bitch. She had to be, to have just gotten away with telling Leia she knew what Treize looked like naked.

 

Leia was frowning delicately. “Sasha?” she asked, confused and Liliya laughed again, waving a hand as though embarrassed at herself.

 

“Treize,” she corrected quickly. “I’m sorry. It’s a Russian thing, to call him that for his middle name and it’s a habit I’m afraid I’ve never been able to break. I’ve known him since he joined the Academy, after all,” she explained.

 

Zechs watched silently as Leia’s frown deepened for a moment and then smoothed out completely as she drew exactly the conclusions Valadin wanted her to. The only time Leia had heard the Russian tendency to break names down for intimate address was when Treize used it to Marie and, occasionally, to Zechs. How Valadin could have known that, Zechs had no idea, but she obviously had and now she was using it to imply that she did it with Treize because she had known him as a child. That was nonsense, of course – no Instructor would ever have addressed a mere cadet so familiarly – but with her severe uniform highlighting the age difference between Valadin and the younger woman, Zechs could well see why Leia would believe that rather than reach for a truth she had no reason to think of. He wondered what she would have done if she’d known she was talking to the woman who had been her husband’s lover for years, who had taken his virginity and now was his mistress.

 

He wondered what Treize would have done with the two women meeting like this, and found he was grateful the older man wasn’t here. Somehow, he thought Treize’s nerves didn’t need the strain.

 

“Of course,” Leia was answering Valadin now, smiling at the older woman all over again. “I should have remembered. He did tell me you’d been one of his teachers.” She gave a little laugh. “I hope he was a good pupil?”

 

Valadin raised a cool eyebrow. “One of the best, Duchess. He’s a very talented man, as I’m sure you’re aware. I was quite disappointed that he chose to specialise in suit based operations rather than my own area of expertise.”

 

Leia lost her smile at Valadin’s words, her expression closing as she focussed on the older woman as her hands clasped in front of her, the fabric of her thin gloves creasing as her fingers locked together. “Suit based operations?” she asked. “What does that mean?” She glanced from Valadin to Zechs and back. “Do you mean combat?”

 

Zechs shook his head, responding to the look Leia had given him. “Not entirely, no. Treize is a dual specialist. He is a combat officer, for the most part, but he also has his programmer’s rating from his time here at Victoria.” He shrugged dismissively. “He’s had several ideas accepted for use in our front line suits in the last couple of years, and they’ve made rather the difference, so I’ve been told.”

 

Valadin nodded. “Statistics agree. We’ve needed a programmer who was also a decent pilot for quite some time.” She turned back to Leia. “You should be proud of him, Duchess,” she said quietly.

 

Leia didn’t appear to hear her last words at all. “Is Treize really?” she demanded, almost talking over the older woman.

 

Zechs and Valadin exchanged glances. “Is Treize really what?” Zechs asked carefully.

 

“A decent pilot. Is he?” Leia asked again.

 

Zechs opened his mouth to answer, confused by the intensity of the blonde woman’s expression, and paused to take a deep breath, not quite sure what to say. How did she not know all this? Did she think her husband’s rank and reputation had come solely from his family name? “Leia,” he started. “Treize isn’t a ‘decent’ pilot, he’s a brilliant one. He’s ranked – what, third or fourth in the Specials?” he explained, looking to the Russian woman for confirmation.

 

Valadin shrugged mysteriously. “More like fifth or sixth these days,” she corrected, with a secretive smile, “but, yes, certainly one of our best.”

 

“Then… then he couldn’t be beaten?” Leia pressed, glancing back and forth again. “There’s not much chance of any rebel pilot being as good as any one trained here, is there?”

 

Zechs scowled, now seriously bewildered as to what she was driving at. “Anyone can be beaten, Leia. It’s not always about pilot skill.”

 

Her face fell, her eyes dropping to the floor beneath her feet, making Zechs wish he’d lied to her rather than telling her that last truth.

 

The boy watched her for a moment, then shook his head. “Leia… what is it you really want to know?” he asked, unconsciously turning into her and settling his free hand on her shoulder. “If you tell me what it is about Treize you’re trying to learn, I’ll be able to answer you better. Does this have something to do with his new posting?”

 

Leia’s face was shadowed by her hat but Zechs could still see the way her eyes darted to his and then fell away again. “I said you’d grown, didn’t I?” she said softly. Her sigh was quiet, little more than the exhalation of a deep breath. “How much has he told you?” she continued.

 

“Treize?” Zechs asked, and when Leia nodded her affirmative, “About what?”

 

She shrugged delicately. “The last few months. His plans for the future. I’m trying to imagine him here, safe at the Academy, because it’s better than imagining him as I have been these last few weeks.”

 

Zechs looked up at Valadin again, caught the way she was deliberately avoiding his gaze, and frowned. “He’s told me nothing. Leia, I don’t understand,” he admitted frankly. “How have you been imagining him?”

 

Leia’s reply shocked Zechs almost as much as the tears in her eyes when she gave it.

 

“Dead,” she said shakily. “I can’t help but imagine him dead.”

 

“Leia!” Zechs exclaimed, shocked to his core. “Why the hell would you say something like that?” he demanded, tightening his grip on her shoulder.

 

The Duchess winced and Zechs realised he was probably holding her too hard, but he couldn’t make himself loosen his fingers. What on Earth had prompted Leia to be having such morbid fantasies about her husband? Zechs could understand her being a little nervous for Treize, perhaps a touch worried – the man was a serving soldier, after all, and she had met him when he was recovering in hospital from wounds taken in combat – but to go so far down such a grim path? There was no justification.

 

Zechs only hoped Leia had shown enough good sense that she’d kept her imaginings to herself. The last thing any soldier needed to hear was that his family didn’t have faith in him, and if there were any truth to the rumours flying around about Treize’s next posting, as Zechs was seriously beginning to think there were, then he was going to need every bit of skill and confidence he could muster.

 

Leia winced again, then looked up at Zechs with mournful eyes. “You’ll look after him, won’t you?” she asked pleadingly. “Promise me, Illia, please. You’ll make sure he comes home, to me and to Marie?”

 

Movement off to one side caught the edge of Zechs’s attention but he was too caught up in the sudden icy chill he was feeling to pay it any real mind. Did Leia know what buttons she was pushing in him, begging him to make sure his goddaughter didn’t have to grow up an orphan, as Zechs himself had done. My God, if she’d gone off at Treize like this it was no wonder that he hadn’t been himself lately.

 

It had never occurred to Zechs to look at Leia as anything other than the sweet, pretty woman his adopted brother had married. He’d always gotten on well with her, too grateful that she didn’t seem to resent his presence in her new home, as it would have been so easy for her to do, to even think of judging her in any way. Now, prompted by her little display, he looked past the surface of her and saw that all the very same traits that made Leia so attractive to Treize also made her wildly unsuited to being his wife.

 

For the first time, Zechs stopped to compare Leia to the woman who had previously held her title – Treize’s mother, Duchess Maryse. The icy-blonde Frenchwoman had been every bit as beautiful as Leia, every bit as polite and soft-spoken when it was called for but there had also been something about her that reminded Zechs, suddenly, of no-one so much as Valadin.

 

As he never had before, Zechs looked at Valadin and saw that there was more to her relationship with Treize then he had ever imagined. He had thought he’d understood in October but he knew now that he’d been blinkered by his own outrage and his feelings of jealousy. His limited perspective had forced him to assume that Valadin’s hold on Treize was purely physical, the charm of an older, more experienced lover who knew more tricks and techniques than Leia could ever dream of and who had absolutely no problem in using any and all of them as suited her. That wasn’t the case, he was realising as he stared at the softly crying Leia. With no warning at all, it was abruptly obvious to him that Treize was as drawn to Valadin’s mind, to her personality, as he was to anything else and the younger man could see why.

 

Leia Barton was Treize’s ideal, his fantasy. Her delicate beauty, naïve wit and sheltered intellect had made her an exotic creature to a seventeen year old used to the rougher, more worldly charms of his fellow soldiers. She was his fairytale princess, his Guinevere, to be romanced and protected in all the best traditions of courtly love, just as he – with all his old world charm and dashing uniform and self-sacrificing bravery – had been her knight in shining armour, complete with his own castle.

 

Unfortunately, as Zechs could attest from bitter personal experience, happily ever afters didn’t happen all that much and now, suddenly, Prince Charming needed to get his hands dirty and his princess didn’t have half the steel she needed to stomach it. As Valadin’s hand closed over his own and squeezed down enough to make him let go of Leia, Zechs looked between the two women again and knew that if he’d had to choose at that moment which of them he’d rather see Treize with for the rest of his life, he would have chosen the Russian spymaster. Like Duchess Maryse, Liliya Valadin had a core of cold iron when it was needed; never, in a million years and if her life had depended on it, would she ever have let her husband, or her husband’s subordinates, see her doubt his skill so much that she was frightened for his safety to the point of tears.

 

“Come on now, Duchess,” Valadin said briskly, interrupting Zechs’s dark thoughts with the words. “Pull yourself together and smile,” she ordered, her eyes cold as she said the words. It was clear she thought that this was lesson Leia shouldn’t have needed – the women of her own circle knew long before they were grown that it was their role to wave their husbands and sons off to fight with a loving kiss and a confident smile.

 

Valadin’s no-nonsense tone seemed to get through to Leia, and the younger woman drew a deep breath as she nodded. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’ve just been so worried. Treize wouldn’t tell me exactly what he was going to be doing, only that he wouldn’t be able to get leave so regularly but that I might be able to live on-base with him, if it wasn’t too dangerous.” Leia clasped her hands together tightly again. “I don’t know what he meant by that,” she carried on. “What did he mean by that?” she asked Zechs. “Why would it be ‘too dangerous’?”

 

Zechs felt surprise roll though him. Again, Leia was proving she knew nothing of the military her husband served with but that wasn’t stopping her leaking useful information. She might not have understood what Treize meant, but Zechs did. For it to be ‘too dangerous’ for Leia to live on a Specials base with her husband could only mean that Treize was expecting to be posted, not to one of the massive, central stations the unit had all over the world, but to a smaller, more makeshift theatre command post.

 

There was only reason for a man of Treize’s rank and expertise to be posted somewhere like that. The rumour mill really had been right.

 

Zechs looked past Leia to Valadin, his gaze seeking a final confirmation for his guesswork only to be met by cool, grey eyes returning the look repressively for a moment. Liliya wasn’t about to talk out of turn and from the way her gaze went back to the other woman almost immediately, she wasn’t pleased with Leia for doing so, either.

 

“Now, Duchess, be careful, please. Careless talk costs lives, you know,” Liliya reminded firmly. “You wouldn’t want to tell Zechs something he shouldn’t know and get him into trouble, now, would you?” she asked with an empty little smile. “And I wouldn’t want to have to tell Sasha not to confide in you anymore.”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow, wondering whether that was idle threat. Treize would no doubt not be pleased with his wife if he ever learned about this little scene, and Valadin no doubt had a lot of influence on what he might choose to do about it, but could she actually order him not to speak to Leia about official business again? They were the same rank now, after all, and even if Valadin did have several years seniority, Treize’s personal standing all but cancelled that out.

 

Then again, Liliya was one of the Specials top intelligence brokers and theirs was a very organic unit. Officers were often given authority well beyond what their rank would have suggested in their own fields of expertise to take full advantage of their aptitude and they all got used to deferring to each other accordingly. Valadin would have yielded command to Treize in a combat situation in a heartbeat; Treize might very well extend the same deference the other way in regard to information control.

 

Whatever the technicalities of the matter, the broader implications of what Liliya had said, what it meant for her relationship with Treize, had gotten through to Leia sufficiently that she had snapped from her tears, bringing her head up to stare at the older woman in surprise.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Leia demanded politely. “Order him not to confide in me? He is my husband!” she protested.

 

“Yes. But he is also a serving officer and if you are so very frightened for him, you would do well to remember that the wrong information leaked to the wrong ears at the wrong moment could only put him in more danger,” Valadin reminded quietly. “You were not raised to be a military wife, were you, my dear?” she asked, suddenly smiling again.

 

Leia frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

 

Liliya glanced down at the little watch she was wearing on her delicate wrist. “Only that perhaps you and I should have a talk over a cup of tea whilst the cadet attends his meeting.”

 

Prompted by Valadin’s words, Zechs glanced down at his own watch, and then swore creatively. His meeting with Treize was in less than ten minutes and, given all the questions he now had for the older man, it wouldn’t do to be late.

 

Valadin smirked at him, waved his dismissal and hooked a hand through one of Leia’s arms, walking the Duchess towards the far door as Zechs took off through the nearer one at a dead run

 


	7. Chapter 7

# Early June AC 191

# Lake Victoria Military Academy

 

 

Zechs ran across the base, pausing only for a few moments in front of Treize’s office door to get his breath back and sweep a hand through his hair to tidy it somewhat before knocking firmly. Given what the older man had said earlier about ignoring his lack of uniform under the circumstances, Zechs figured he would be better being on time and rumpled, than late and pristine.

 

His knock was answered almost immediately by Treize’s voice bidding him to enter, and the younger man opened the office door to find the redhead sitting behind his desk, reading from a single file open in front of him.

 

There was a stack of similar files at his left elbow, all the same beige cardboard, all labelled in the same precise print. The only variation in any of them was in their thickness and in the fact that some of them appeared to be considerably more well read than others.

 

“Take a seat, Mr Marquise,” Treize bade quietly, not looking up from his reading. “Would you care for something to drink?”

 

“No, sir,” Zechs replied, crossing the room and settling himself gingerly on the edge of the chair Treize had positioned on the far side of his desk. It usually sat against the wall – rare was the time any cadet was invited to sit in the presence of a senior officer. “Thank you, sir,” he added.

 

He folded his hands together in his lap and waited, wondering why he suddenly felt so nervous. He had nothing to be nervous about. There was no doubt in his mind that he’d done well on his final exams and this was Treize he was talking to!

 

Perhaps because the last few minutes with Leia had been so unsettling? Or perhaps because he knew that his entire future would be decided in the next twenty minutes or so. The decisions he and Treize made in the course of this interview would affect everything for years to come.

 

Treize looked up from his reading, saw how Zechs was perched on his chair and smiled gently. “You look worried, Lieutenant,” he said conversationally, closing the file and letting Zechs see his own name stamped on the front of it. “Is there something I don’t know?”

 

“No, sir,” Zechs replied again, wondering why Treize had been re-reading his service record. Surely the older man knew the whole thing inside out?

“Good.”

 

Treize pushed himself back from his desk, standing up fluidly and coming around the table to sit on one corner of it, looking down at Zechs warmly. “Do you need me to tell you your final marks were outstanding?” he asked.

 

Zechs shook his head. “Not really, sir,” he admitted, knowing Treize wouldn’t want or appreciate false modesty from him. Zechs was more than well aware of what his average mark had been before the final series of assessments – he would have had to fail all of them spectacularly for his overall mark to be less than good and he knew he hadn’t done that. It had never been the purpose of this meeting to tell him he’d passed, or even to tell him he’d passed well. He was there to learn only three things – whether he’d achieved his self-set goal of matching Treize’s own scores, whether he or Noin had come out on top, and what he’d be doing for his first posting.

 

Treize nodded. “You beat me,” he said, answering the first of Zechs’s questions with the simple truth. “And with some style, too,” he admitted, letting his expression turn a little rueful. “I apparently did my job too well.”

 

Zechs couldn’t help but grin. “I’m sorry, sir,” he tried, but it wasn’t sincere and they both knew it.

 

The older man smiled back at him. “No, you aren’t, brat,” he replied. “To break your marks down for you, then,” he carried on, having given Zechs a moment to acknowledge the friendly insult, “you passed your required degree with 1st class honours – for all the good a degree in Literature is going to do for you. Your elective courses were all rated excellent or outstanding. Your physical elements all graded well into the nineties and the written papers were….” Treize stopped and shrugged. “Well, we had to mark them three times to be sure we weren’t missing something. Your final score was 98.67, which is something of a record. Congratulations,” he added lightly, waiting for Zechs to catch up with him.

 

The younger man blinked behind his glasses, then blinked again as he asked, “Ninety – _what_?”

 

Treize stood up, his eyes dancing. “That’s about what everyone said,” he said. “98.67,” he repeated patiently.

 

“Fuck me!”

 

The heartfelt exclamation made Treize dissolve into pealing laughter. “That, too,” he chuckled.

 

“I didn’t think anything above 95 was even possible?” Zechs spluttered. “I thought the grading was stacked to make sure of it?”

 

Treize nodded. “It is. That was your score after we curved the grading as hard as we could and we still had trouble getting the board to accept it as the result. I think, if there hadn’t been two of you, we’d have had to award the 95 by default.”

 

“Two of us?” Zechs wondered, scowling as he thought and then grinning all over again as he understood. “Noin…?” he demanded, delighted.

 

“Of course Noin,” Treize confirmed. “Who else? I shouldn’t tell you anyone else’s scoring but I’ll trust you to keep your mouth shut this once. Noin totalled 98.66. She made a slight slip on the final written paper. You’re top of your class.”

 

Sudden suspicion bloomed in Zechs’s mind at that – why would Noin have made a mistake, she’d known the material at least as well as he had? – but he dismissed it a moment later as elation rose him in him again. Treize was still grinning at him, clearly happy at having his own record score of 94.02 so thoroughly beaten by his students, and the pride in his eyes soaked through Zechs like the heat from a blanket.

 

“Happy?” Treize asked Zechs and the blond nodded.

 

“Good,” the older man continued. “You should be. You’ve worked damned hard for this.”

 

Zechs let himself have a minute more of just resting in the moment, and then pulled himself together and brought his thoughts back to the topic at hand. “So, where am I going?” he asked, casting a curious glance at his folder.

 

Treize nodded his approval but he dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “We’ll get into that in a moment, if you don’t mind? There’s a couple of things I need to go through with you that aren’t standard for this little chat, and they will have some bearing on your decision making, so I think it best to do so first. If that’s alright with you?” he asked, looking at Zechs in anticipation.

 

Zechs let his face show his surprise, but he settled back into his seat properly and shrugged. “Can I ask you a question in return?” he dared. “There’s something I need to know, I think.”

 

The request got him a raised eyebrow from his former instructor but the older man merely returned his shrug. “If you like,” he said mildly. “Is it a complicated question? I’d like to give Otto some warning if I’m going to be running particularly late.”

 

Zechs shook his head. “Shouldn’t be. It’s pretty much a yes or no answer I think.”

 

“Fair enough,” Treize replied. He pushed away from his perch on the edge of his desk and walked across the room, pulling back one of the drapes over the window and unhooking a black case from over the rail. “This is yours,” he said quietly, offering it out with one hand. “Presuming you like it, of course. Feel free to tell me if you hate it.”

 

Frowning with confusion, Zechs got to his feet and took the bag from his friend, looking down at it blankly. Had Treize bought him a graduation present?

 

It took him a few seconds to realise that he was looking at a garment bag practically identical to the one Treize stored his uniforms in when he had to transport them, having long since eschewed the standard kit bag for the damage it did to the fine quality wool his jackets were made from. It was a nice gesture of him to make sure Zechs never struggled with his presentation – he knew damn well that the case hadn’t been a cheap purchase – but what had that got to do with ‘liking’ it?

 

“You need to open it,” Treize commented dryly, making Zechs realise the obvious a moment too late. It appeared Treize had pre-empted the official kit handout tomorrow morning and secured Zechs’s officer’s uniform for him a day early.

 

Eager to get a first look at the clothing he’d be spending the majority of his time in for the next few years, Zechs released the catches of the case with nimble fingers, and then stopped and frankly stared at what he revealed.

 

“Red?” he asked blankly. “Have I missed something?”

 

Treize laughed at him again. “Apparently so, Lieutenant.” He tilted his head to one side, taking the garment case back and pulling the vividly scarlet jacket free so that Zechs could look at it properly. “The Academy staff felt you and Noin deserved a little something for all your hard work over the past three years. As you said, a final score of over 95 shouldn’t have been possible and yet you both smashed that marker. You’ve both also already contributed to the Special’s understanding of how our mecha work and revolutionised how we pilot them. Do you remember that stunt the two of you pulled on the last water-based exercise?”

 

Zechs was hardly likely to have forgotten and he quickly nodded his agreement. “Yes.”

 

“Julian Larkspur was so impressed with what the two of you did that he analysed the data, wrote a report and submitted it to Command. The techniques you demonstrated are being tested over this summer and will go into the teaching schedule here at Victoria starting with the next cadet class. Between the two,” Treize continued, “it was enough to get you both the Outstanding Service commendation, and with the commendation comes the right to personalize your uniform.” He gestured at the jacket. “You’ll have to forgive me, but since I have a personal tailor with all your measurements permanently on file, I took the liberty of jumping the gun a little bit and ordering something for you so I could surprise you with it. You are, of course,” he added more quietly, “completely free to design something entirely different if you don’t like it.”

 

Zechs stared at the customised coat, noting the similarities to Treize’s own, and the differences. “I don’t hate it,” he admitted. “I’m not sure about the colour. What on Earth made you pick red?”

 

Treize’s expression took on a decidedly impish cast. “Ahh,” he murmured. “Shall I confess that wasn’t entirely my idea or shall I let her tell you herself?” he asked the air.

 

Zechs blinked. “It was Leia’s idea?” he asked, surprised. He’d never seen her wear the colour herself and he couldn’t imagine her suggesting it for him, it didn’t seem in her character to come up with something so… attention seeking.

 

“Lord, no,” Treize answered, confirming the blonde’s thoughts. “Hardly her style. Aunt Katya,” he told the younger man, when Zechs scowled at the coat again. “When she was dancing with me at her Christmas Ball, she practically ordered me to get you out of the regular uniform as soon as possible. She suggested strong red for the colour, with the instruction that I – and I quote – ‘make him stand out, child, because he’ll never blend in!’ Should I not have listened to her?” he asked.

 

A flicker of amusement passing through him at the idea of his instructor being referred to as a ‘child’, Zechs looked at the coat again, trying to imagine himself wearing it, and failing completely. He knew well enough what he looked like in uniform but he’d spent the last three years in the deep navy blue of the Specials and red was never a colour he’d particularly chosen for his clothes.

 

“If you really don’t like it…” Treize started, apparently deciding that Zechs’s silence was him trying to find a way to tactfully tell his instructor he hated the jacket.

 

“No, it’s fine. I’m just… trying to picture it, that’s all,” Zechs admitted. He stared for another second or two and then sighed and shook his head. “I’m not going to know until I wear it,” he said. “I realise it makes me sound a horrible cliché but I haven’t bought so much as a t-shirt in the last eighteen months without trying it on first. Otto’s fault,” he added when he saw Treize start to smirk.

 

“I’m sure it is,” Treize agreed mildly.

 

“It is,” Zechs insisted. He took the case from the older man and began putting the uniform back into it.

 

It was only as he reached for one of the sleeves to tuck it into place where it was being reluctant to go that he noticed the single metal pip set into the black leather facing at the wrist. It made him stop and stare again, and then look up at the older man in disbelief as he finally heard what Treize had been calling him since he walked through the door.

 

“Lieutenant?” he choked. “How? Has Noin…?”

 

Treize shook his head. “That was the other thing I wanted to discuss with you,” he said quietly. “Your promotion to Officer is guaranteed but because of your outstanding achievement here at the Academy, your noted flair for combat pilotage and the recommendations of your key instructors, and dependant upon you accepting certain of the postings being offered to you, the Specials would also like to offer you an immediate brevet rank of Lieutenant.”

 

He took the case from Zechs and laid it carefully on his desk before turning back to put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “It’s an effective double promotion. The only reason it isn’t a full rank yet is that it’s never been done and there were concerns that it would be too much pressure for you straight out of the Academy,” Treize explained. “If you accept and you prove capable, the rank would be confirmed as full in three months time, backdated on your service record to today’s date. If, at any time in those three months, you or your commanding officer feel it was a mistake, the whole thing will be erased as though it were never offered and you’ll come up for promotion to Lieutenant as you would have anyway.”

 

“Wow,” Zechs managed. “I don’t…. All this because I did well on a few exam papers?” he asked blankly.

 

Treize shrugged. “You didn’t ‘do well’, Zechs. Your performance was stunning.” He shook his head. “You’re right to think it’s not quite that simple. There are political factors at work as well, of course, amongst other things. As I said, it is dependant on which of the postings you’ve been offered you accept. Some of them have no need or want for another Lieutenant at this time or weren’t willing to take the risk.”

 

The instructor let the blond go and began walking back to his chair. “It doesn’t make them bad choices,” he reassured, shrugging again. “You don’t have any bad choices, really. Most commanders were sensible enough not to submit an offer at all if they knew you were too good for them. Those few that did, I discarded as they came in. You need to realise that you’re something of a prodigy out amongst the ranks. Rumours have been flying about you for months now.”

 

“But why?” Zechs asked, watching as Treize sat down again and reopened his folder. “I haven’t done anything yet?”

 

“You will,” Treize said confidently. “And the whole unit knows it. That’s part of the reason for the promotion offer and the customised coat. We’ve been having morale problems for a few years – the break from the regular ranks is growing and it’s causing friction – and there are some changes in the works that are going to make them worse. General Catalonia is hoping that you, alongside certain other young officers, will be the start of correcting that. If we can give the troops icons, true leaders, something to work towards, to impress, to idolise, then we can give them the focus and the loyalty we’re going to need them to have.”

 

“For what?” Zechs asked, surprised by this sudden flood of information. He couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated. General Catalonia, the Specials overall commander, wanted him to become one of these ‘idols’ for the troops? And there Zechs had been, thinking he was just going to hide in the ranks for a few years.

 

Intimidated or not, he didn’t miss the fact that Treize merely shook his head instead of answering the question, and the blond narrowed his eyes at his friend. “All right,” he said softly. “My turn. Where are you going when you leave here?”

 

“Back to Moscow for three weeks, I hope,” Treize replied calmly. He was sorting sheets of paper onto his desk form the folder. “I’ll let you take these with you and look them over. There’s too many of them to sort them right now. Bring the ones that catch your eye to me after dinner tonight and we’ll discuss them.”

 

Zechs leaned forward and put his hand in the middle of the pile, stopping Treize adding any more sheets to it. “You promised to answer me, Treize,” he reminded. “I’m not the only one with rumours flying about them and you’ve been dodging me asking for weeks now. I’m hardly going to decide where I’m going when I don’t know what you’re doing.”

 

Treize sat back in his chair and looked up at the younger man speculatively for a moment. “You have a flair for intimidation,” he commented neutrally. “Had it occurred to you that I’m not telling you because I don’t want to prejudice you?” he asked. “I want you to make the decision about your posting freely, based on what you want and what would suit your goals best. I don’t want you choosing because you think you have to, because you think I want you to or because Leia tried to guilt you into it,” he said.

 

Zechs flinched at the words and the older man sighed. “Too late for that, I see,” he said wearily. “I’m sorry. I should have known she’d say something but I did try to warn her off. Take no notice. She’s been a bit… off-balance for the last few months and she’s being paranoid and overly dramatic.”

 

“She’s frightened,” Zechs replied. “I got that much.” He wasn’t about to divulge the rest, though doubtless Valadin would. “Treize, if you don’t want me in your command, why don’t you just say so?” he asked, holding his breath as he waited for the answer. He was doing his best to appear to the older man as though he weren’t too bothered one way or another, as though it was merely a professional concern, but it wasn’t and it never would be.

 

“Because I’d be lying to you,” Treize replied evenly. “I do want you. Badly, in fact, but that’s no reason for you to….”

 

Zechs held his hand up to cut him off. “Then tell me what I’ll be doing,” he said firmly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

_Early June AC 191_

_Lake Victoria Military Academy_

# 

 

 

It really wasn’t that difficult a decision – except that, apparently, it was.

 

Zechs stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, glancing between himself and his coat and trying to fix on whether he could stand it or not.

 

He’d been standing in front of the mirror for almost twenty minutes and it was bordering on the ridiculous. He really should be able to make a choice as simple as whether he liked the colour of his new coat or not given that earlier that day he’d been able to pick which posting he was taking in a matter of a split second, without even really knowing what it entailed.

 

Not that Treize had let him say he’d decided that quickly, of course. The older man had proven quite stubborn in that regard, insisting on going through half the other offers Zechs had received to make sure he knew what he was turning down.

 

Zechs had listened in silence, bored and not troubling to hide the occasional yawn. He had no intention of going anywhere but to Treize’s new unit and didn’t see why Treize was going through all the rigmarole. As Zechs had pointed out at the time, if Treize didn’t want him to accept his offer why make it so stellar? In fact, why make it at all?

 

Treize’s reply had been that he was selfish, a comment that had reduced Zechs to peals of laughter. Selfish? To offer him a double promotion? Immediate command responsibility? A crack at the newest, most powerful suits coming out of the production sites? Absolutely that was selfish.

 

It was so ‘selfish’ an offer that every other cadet at the Academy was going to be green with envy when they heard. The rumour mill had been right about Treize’s new posting – no less than command of his own full Wing – but it had missed the details. What Treize was going to wasn’t just any Wing. It was an entirely new type of unit. Mixed suit, fast moving, an elite within an army of elites with a streamlined chain of command and a Commander with a direct line to the ear of the Specials general, it was the experiment on which the future of the Specials was resting. If it worked, then the whole unit would be reorganised into the same pattern.

 

And any officer who’d served in it would suddenly become a very hot commodity.

 

Not least its First Lieutenant.

 

Zechs had read and re-read Treize’s written offer to him, not quite able to believe it, and then, very bluntly, told his friend that he’d gone quite mad. It wasn’t a big enough risk he was taking, an experimental intervention force, that he thought an untried boy in charge of his first squadron was a good idea? Treize wasn’t, quite, offering him the position of unit second-in-command – that was to go to the second squadron lead, a captain with several years of experience on Treize himself – but he was offering him the next step down. It wouldn’t take very much for Zechs to find himself with the sort of independence and authority officers normally took years to acquire.

 

That, Treize had replied with a razor sharp smile, was the idea. What did Zechs think Treize had been training him for? The older man had been playing with the idea for a new type of unit since his own days at the Academy but he hadn’t thought the time right to table it until the day he’d seen Zechs wipe the floor with the standard combat simulations half way through his second year and realised that his adopted little brother was turning into exactly the pilot Treize needed for his ideas to work. It made, as far as Treize was concerned, perfect sense to give Zechs so much precedence when he was the model Treize wanted every other officer he selected to adopt.

 

The comment had made Zechs blush with embarrassment and persist with his insistence that he was taking Treize’s offer so much that the older man had finally yielded.

 

Whatever his comments might have been about wanting Zechs to make the best decision for himself, Treize had been pleased with his choice. The planned dinner with Leia had been notable for the fact that Treize had been positively alight with enthusiasm for his new unit, thrilled with Zechs’s choice to come with him and repeatedly begging Leia’s forgiveness when he let the conversation drift into technical talk about his plans and commandeered the cutlery as impromptu model suits. Leia, in her turn, seemed so relieved that Zechs was going to be with Treize that she was glowing and indulgent and Zechs, in their company, had found himself just as happy and relaxed as they were.

 

Between the three of them, it had taken them far too long to get through a single meal and there had been far too many bottles of wine accompanying it. None of them had been sober when they climbed into the car waiting to take them back to the Academy and Zechs – having learned something about discretion being the better part of valour in the past ten months and being now personally familiar with the feeling putting that particular expression behind Treize’s eyes as he looked at his wife – had refused Treize’s polite offer of a night cap with a knowing grin and a dismissive wave, choosing to go for a walk in the cool evening air rather than torment his future CO with his presence longer than he had to.

 

The walk had cleared his head enough that he’d remembered he had another decision to make before morning and he’d taken the garment case into the bathroom with him when he showered for bed so that he could try his possible uniform on and see what it looked like.

 

Except, he couldn’t make his mind up whether he liked it or not.

 

Giving into what had been an inevitability, he opened the bathroom door with an ill-tempered yank and strode into the main room to let his roommate make the decision for him.

 

Otto was lying on his bed, his curly head bent over a stack of papers. He looked up when Zechs threw open the bathroom door and his melted-chocolate eyes widened noticeably. “Oh, my!” he exclaimed.

 

Zechs winced. “That bad?” he asked.

 

The smaller boy sat up, leaning forward to look at his friend more closely. His left hand lifted and one imperious finger made a circle in the air as Otto tilted his head in his scrutiny. Zechs obeyed the cue to turn around, looking back over his shoulder to gauge Otto’s expression as he did so.

 

He wasn’t exactly reassured by the look on Otto’s face; the smaller boy seemed caught between shock and something Zechs just couldn’t name.

 

“Is that going to be your uniform, sweetie?” Otto asked, standing up suddenly and crossing the room as he gestured for Zechs to turn around again.

 

“Possibly,” Zechs answered honestly. “I’m still working that out.”

 

“Wherever did you get it from?”

 

“Treize gave it to me earlier. He had his tailor make it up but I’m not sure….” Zechs trailed off as Otto reached up and put a finger across his lips.

 

“I am,” the smaller boy said quietly, something feral in the back of his eyes that Zechs had only seen once or twice before. “Bloody _hell,_ gorgeous. Haven’t you looked in a mirror?”

 

Zechs flushed uncomfortably. “Yes, of course I have… but….”

 

“But?” Otto demanded. “There’s no ‘but’ about it, love. You say Treize designed this for you?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” Zechs agreed warily. “He got his tailor to make it.”

 

Otto nodded sagely. “He’s good, I’ll give him that.” As he spoke, his hands went to the fastening of Zechs’s belt and loosened it. “A few suggestions, if you wouldn’t mind, hon?” he asked.

 

Zechs shrugged willingly enough. He was used to Otto commenting on his wardrobe, and he’d come out of the bathroom to get his opinion.

 

“Lose the waistcoat,” Otto instructed, helping Zechs shuck the heavy jacket for long enough for him to remove the snug red waistcoat that went underneath it. “It works on Treize but you don’t need it. I’d keep to just the undershirt, if I were you, and perhaps button the coat a little more closely.” He took the waistcoat as Zechs slipped out of it obediently and then helped him put the jacket back on straight over the deep grey, high-collared shirt that had been in the garment bag as well as the rest of the outfit.

 

“Better,” Otto said immediately, tossing the waistcoat onto his bed rather carelessly. “Now, then….” He stepped into the blond again and began tweaking the rest of his outfit, refolding the lapels of his coat further up and retying his cravat to fall inside the collar of his shirt, so that the Specials logos on the throat were clear.

 

“There,” the smaller boy said, with a flourishing gesture as he stepped back from his roommate and reached for his wardrobe door. “Done.” He opened the door and let Zechs see himself in the mirror on its inside.

 

The blond studied his reflection again, carefully, noting the changes Otto had made with curious eyes. Without the waistcoat under it, the jacket fit a little big on him, particularly across the shoulders, but it wasn’t so bad and Otto was right to make the change. The new line of the red against the white of his breeches was far more flattering, better suited to his taller, lankier shape, and the lack of froth at his throat took care of a detail Zechs hadn’t even been aware he didn’t like. He turned to one side and then the other a little, and then nodded to his reflection as he decided he could live with it.

 

“It’ll do,” he told Otto. “Thank you. I really didn’t want to tell Treize I didn’t want to wear it.”

 

Otto rolled his eyes. “You worry too much about that man’s opinion, sweetie,” he chided softly. “And what do you mean, ‘it’ll do’?” He shook his head. “It’ll more than do and if you don’t like it, wear it next time we go out dancing. I guarantee you won’t be able to move for offers!”

 

Zechs ran his hand lightly down the front of the jacket, still getting used to it, and then smiled suddenly as he registered Otto’s words for what they really were.

 

With an impish expression, he turned from the mirror and looked at his roommate. “You like it, do you?” he asked casually. “How much?”

 

“Enough,” Otto admitted readily, long past the point of being embarrassed by his attraction to his bunkmate. “Care to do something about it, gorgeous?” he quizzed, only half teasing.

 

Zechs let his smile grow speculative. “Maybe. Come here,” he instructed, holding out a hand and using the grip to draw the smaller boy closer when Otto took it.

 

Otto stepped into the offered embrace willingly, freeing his hand and twisting both it and its twin into Zechs’s hair as the blond brought his mouth down on his roommate’s and took it forcefully.

 

It was more than two years since Zechs and Otto had first kissed each other and there was little resemblance between that embarrassed peck on the lips and their current contact. That kiss had been something Otto had talked Zechs into in their first year at the Academy, his courage bolstered by his first flush of youthful lust and the dregs of a bottle of vodka; this one was the latest in a series designed as foreplay between two rather more experienced men.

 

Otto’s hands stayed tangled in Zechs’s hair for the first few seconds but then, as Zechs stroked his tongue against the other boy’s, they slipped down to rest on the blonde’s shoulders for a moment before slipping again. Otto traced a line down Zechs’s spine, and then began fiddling with the fastenings on his new jacket again, trying to get it undone.

 

Zechs stepped back slightly, breaking the kiss to help his friend with his task, and dropped the coat on Otto’s bed with the waistcoat before manoeuvring the smaller boy towards his own bed with firm hands on his hips. He pushed him to sit on the end of it and grinned down at him. “Stay,” he commanded softly, when Otto reached to pull him down as well.

 

Gracefully, Zechs went to his knees in front of his friend, bending his head as he reached for the simple zip fly of Otto’s trousers, and the dark haired boy caught his breath as he realised what Zechs intended.

 

“Sweetie, you don’t have to,” he murmured.

 

Zechs looked up and smiled at him. “I know,” he agreed easily. “I want to.” He concentrated on what he was doing for a moment before frowning. “Unless you’d rather we do something else?” he asked, as the thought occurred to him. “I don’t mean to push you.”

 

Otto couldn’t help the chuckle that rose from him. “Oh, yes, because I’m going to refuse you going down on me!” he laughed. “Not likely, love. I don’t think any man’s ever going to do that. You’re quite the talent.”

 

Zechs coloured a little. “I enjoy it,” he said by way of explanation.

 

“I know,” Otto replied, putting a hand out and stroking Zechs’s face with the backs of his fingers. “We have this conversation every time. Stop apologising. It’s nothing to apologise for. Do you really think I mind?” he asked. “Aside from anything else, I love being able to smirk knowingly whenever I hear someone talking about you in the clubs. You have no idea how much of a reputation you’re starting to gather.”

 

“Reputation?” Zechs asked, letting his hands settle on his friend’s hips with intent. “What reputation?”

 

Otto took a deep breath, letting his eyes flutter closed in anticipation. “Don’t pretend you don’t know,” he ordered. “There was a reason you didn’t want Treize seeing you in that t-shirt.”

 

Zechs stilled, scowling up at his friend. He dropped his hands from the move they’d been about to make to hook into the waistband of Otto’s underwear and smacked the top of his thigh instead. “That’s not funny,” he said. “The reason I didn’t want Treize seeing that t-shirt was that I don’t need him thinking of me like that. It had nothing to do with whether I have a reputation for oral sex or not.” He shook his head in frustration. “You need to understand this, Otto. You and I might consider being able to deep throat a valuable life skill but I doubt Treize would agree!”

 

Otto smiled at the indignation in Zechs’s voice, wondering how long it would be before he cottoned on to the fact that Treize wasn’t nearly so sheltered as Zechs thought he was, and then stilled as his words registered properly. His chocolate eyes opened wide as he stared down at his friend in surprise. “Since when,” he asked archly, “have you been able to deep throat?”

 

Zechs’s face froze for a moment, still showing his annoyance, and then the blond grinned up at his erstwhile lover, the expression pure mischief tinged with a little evil. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he replied coyly. “Let’s just say I’ve been practicing,” he said, smirking.

 

“On what?” Otto demanded, sounding outraged. “I certainly knew nothing about it and I know you better than to think you’d try it at the clubs until you were sure you could pull it off!”

 

Zechs laughed softly, turning his attention back to his self-appointed task at hand. “Bottom drawer of the nightstand,” he said lightly, and then had to bear down with his hands to keep Otto in place when his friend moved to look. “Not now,” Zechs ordered, chuckling “You can satisfy your curiosity later. I want to try this now.”

 

Otto settled back into place willingly enough, shrugging his acceptance and kicking his feet as Zechs pulled at his trousers to help him get them off. As Zechs pulled at his socks, Otto yanked his t-shirt off over his head.

 

The dark-haired cadet was more than half-hard already and it took nothing more than the sudden warmth of Zechs’s hand on his length to get him all the way there. Feeling affection for his friend rise, Otto caught Zechs’s jaw in his hand just as the other boy began to bend down and pulled him up so they could kiss instead.

 

Zechs hummed into the kiss, enjoying the contact for a moment before he broke it and gave Otto a gentle shove backwards onto the bed.

 

Propping himself on one elbow, Otto used the other hand to gather up Zechs’s hair and pull it into a loose ponytail at the back of his neck, keeping it both out of Zechs’s way and allowing Otto to see what he was doing. As he’d just proved with the new uniform, Otto was very much visually oriented and this was a sight he didn’t want to miss.

 

The first time Zechs had tried oral sex with Otto, he’d gone straight to taking the other boy’s erection in his mouth and sucking clumsily, repeatedly gagging himself in the process. It was a sign of how much his skill at the task had improved in the twelve months since that he didn’t do the same now. Instead, he bent his head and laid a gentle kiss against the other cadet’s flat belly, low down enough that Otto caught his breath, his muscles tensing reflexively.

 

“Shh,” Zechs soothed, setting one strong hand against Otto’s hip again and stroking lightly with his fingers. “Let me work.”

 

“I’m not stopping you,” Otto said breathlessly, jumping again when the blond dropped another kiss onto his stomach, and then bent lower.

 

The brush of the very tip of Zechs’s tongue against Otto’s balls made the dark-haired boy shut his eyes again with a low moan, and a more firm lick had him shuddering under the touch. Zechs lifted his head with a curious look – he wouldn’t have thought that Otto would be this eager or this sensitive given that they’d slept together the night before. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

 

Otto nodded. “Fine… I’m fine. You’re just… hitting buttons, that’s all. All dressed up and on your knees….”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow; when had Otto developed such a kinky side? “That’s new,” he commented mildly.

 

Otto shrugged. “So’s that uniform,” he answered.

 

Zechs chuckled, letting the breath exhaled with it wash across the skin he’d just dampened with his tongue, knowing it would feel warm, and then chill on sensitive tissues. “There’s a reason to keep it, then, even if I were never going to wear it again.”

 

“Rather,” Otto agreed, and then lost whatever else he might have been about to add as Zechs wrapped a hand around his erection and brushed his lips across it in nothing so much as a kiss. The reaction made Zechs smile as he bent his head further and let his tongue stroke lightly at the head before slipping it carefully under the foreskin and licking gently.

 

Otto’s breathing caught, settled and then caught again when the blond pulled back and began using his tongue on his friend’s erection in a different way, making small, teasing circles around the tip and lapping with the flat of it as though Otto were nothing so much as a lollypop. His free hand was alternating between stroking Otto’s belly and holding his balls, rubbing lightly with his thumb at the loose skin.

 

Tiny droplets of clear fluid welled up and Zechs took them delicately, then chased after more by teasing the slit with his tongue. Otto gasped, his hand tightening in Zechs’s hair, and the blond took that as his cue to move on a step.

 

Without lifting his head more than he had to, Zechs freed his hand from Otto’s hip and held it out. “Lube,” he instructed, and Otto blinked at him before he quite worked out what the other boy meant.

 

Flopping flat on his back, and squirming when Zechs began licking his erection base to tip slowly, Otto reached above his head and pulled open the top drawer of Zechs’s nightstand, rooting around blindly through the ordered contents until he found what he was looking for. “Here,” he said, sitting up again. He held out Zechs’s half-used bottle of lube, a handful of tissues and the small, unmarked tin the blond kept his condoms in.

 

Zechs took the lube and the tissues without so much as looking up, but the tin made him pause. “Otto? Do I need these?” he asked quietly, gazing at his friend with a worried frown. Treize’s assumptions aside – Zechs had nearly injured himself trying not to laugh in his face at the Instructor’s version of a safe sex lecture just after Christmas – he and Otto were, and always had been, scrupulously careful in their club outings, only ever abandoning the condoms with each other. If Otto was insisting they use them now, he was as good as admitting he’d slipped in that goal and hadn’t been cleared by the medics yet.

 

Otto shook his head. “You don’t need them. I thought you might want them.”

 

Zechs smiled in relief. “Not likely,” he said, with a snort. “Most of my reason for going down on you is that I don’t have to use those.” He grimaced comically. “I hate losing the taste of my partner, it’s half the point.”

 

Otto raised his eyebrows. “So glad I can satisfy your oral fixation,” he replied dryly, and winced when Zechs slapped him on the leg again.

 

“So you should be,” the blond answered smartly. “Have I ever given you reason to complain?” As he talked, Zechs tipped some of the lube into his hands and held his palms together to warm the liquid.

 

“Admittedly….” Otto choked as Zechs took his erection in clever fingers and bent to suck the tip into his mouth. “Oh, God! Admittedly not.”

 

Zechs’s only reply was a meaningful hum.

 

Concentrating completely on his goal, Zechs formed a tight seal with his lips around the other boy’s length, letting his tongue press against the sensitive underside as he began to work up and down in shallow increments. His right hand wrapped around the shaft, making up the distance and, with a creditable amount of co-ordination, he began moving it in time, twisting his wrist at the top of each stroke just before his fingers met his mouth.

 

The lube on his fingers made the grip of his hand merge with the feel of his mouth, both of them warm, wet pressure, and Otto didn’t immediately notice when Zechs began lengthening the down stroke with his mouth. He was too caught up in the image in front of him, and in the shivers of pleasure running through his body. There was no doubt that Zechs had a God-given talent for this and he seemed to be sparing none of it at that moment.

 

Quickly, too quickly, Otto felt his body tightening towards his release. When Zechs suddenly took him to the root, swallowing around the length of him and letting go with his hand altogether, it was all Otto could do not to come.

 

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped, his eyes squeezing shut as his back arched. He groaned shakily, his hand biting into the top sheet on the bed. “You want to give a man some warning, angel?” he asked breathlessly.

 

Zechs looked up at him through his untidy fringe and smirked despite his position. He pulled back slowly, taking hold with his hand again and making a circle of his thumb and first two fingers. The grip was more for support than anything else; certainly, he didn’t come up far enough to need to repeat his earlier trick of co-ordination.

 

Otto let go of the bedding and combed his fingers through Zechs’s hair, letting the caress show his appreciation for the effort the other boy was putting in. The two of them were often quite lazy in their dealings with each other, but there was nothing lazy in what Zechs was doing. If anything, he seemed to be trying especially hard to please his roommate.

 

Zechs worked the length in his mouth expertly, teasing at sensitive spots and keeping up a steady pressure from his throat, occasionally using his tongue or his hand to add another dimension to the feeling. At about the same moment that Otto thought it really couldn’t get any better, that he might just go mad if it did, the blond brought his free hand up and began running still slick fingers first over Otto’s balls, and then further back, teasing at the opening to his body and all the nerve endings that surrounded it.

 

It made Otto whine helplessly, his muscles locking as he tensed in anticipation. “Fuck, love,” he choked. He pushed at Zechs’s shoulder with the heel of his hand in warning. “I’m going to come,” he managed, fighting himself for a moment before giving it up as a lost cause.

 

Zechs’s response was to take his lover to the root again, opening his throat completely as he’d only recently learned to do, and to sink the fingers playing with Otto’s entrance into his body, using his thumb as well to press against the nerve cluster hidden in the skin from both inside and out. Otto cried out sharply at the flash of pleasure, neatly trimmed nails biting into the skin of Zechs’s shoulder even through his shirt, the sound deepening into heartfelt moans as he came.

 

Zechs swallowed hard as he felt the first pulses of release wash through his friend, drawing it from him, then pulled his head up to take the fluid Otto spilled on his tongue rather than straight down his throat, revelling in the feeling of it.

 

Otto moaned again as he forced his eyes open in time to see Zechs swallow slowly, but Zechs hadn’t done it to give his lover a visual thrill. As he’d said to the other boy at the start, the taste of the man he was with was half the reason Zechs had made so much of a focus of this aspect of sex, something he really, genuinely did enjoy. He’d spent quite a lot of time and effort over the past few months finding the best compromise between safety and still having that but there was nothing except trust that allowed for his partner coming in his mouth as Otto just had and he was going to enjoy it whilst he could.

 

“Bloody hell, sweetie,” Otto groaned as he began to relax from the high, shivering occasionally as Zechs continued to suck gently on his softening length. “You’re going to spoil me for anyone else if you aren’t careful.”

 

Zechs shrugged, finally pulling away completely and wiping his mouth on the back of one hand. He coughed lightly, then shook his head. “Oops?” he offered, smiling as he said it.

 

“Oops?” Otto repeated. “That’s the best reply you have?” He shook his head in disgust. “And I thought you were the nice, intelligent, articulate type.”

 

“You seem to like me better when I have my mouth full,” the blond quipped. He sat back on his heels as Otto’s expression shifted to one of shock, and then pushed to his feet on legs that were little stiff from the strain of kneeling up as long as he had been. He dropped to sit down on the edge of the bed, reaching his arms above his head to stretch the kinks out, and found himself giving a yelp of surprise as the world tilted and he found himself flat on his back. “Why?” he asked mildly, querying why Otto had felt it necessary to pull him over.

 

Otto grinned down at him cheerfully. “So I can return the favour, of course!” he replied, and proceeded to suit word to deed.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested, I have linked the images I used for Valadin at the start of this chapter
> 
> Universally, if I'm referencing something like jewelry or dresses, I have a specific source image for it!

 

# 

 

 

 

_Early June AC 191_

_Lake Victoria Military Academy_

 

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

 

Zechs and Otto both turned their heads to glance over their shoulders at the voice behind them, looking away from the open doors to the Grand Hall they’d been about to walk through to an alcove set opposite them.

 

[Liliya Valadin was leaning against a pillar ](http://www.photobox.co.uk/my/photo?album_id=2766729881&photo_id=2471603822#2471603822)just in front of that alcove, her eyes warm as she smiled at the two boys. Her appearance was so far removed from anything either Zechs or Otto had ever seen before that they both found themselves staring at her blankly for a moment before Zechs pulled himself together enough to nod in answer. “Good evening, Major,” he greeted carefully. “Were you waiting for someone?”

 

“Major Larkspur,” she replied. She pushed herself away from the pillar with an elegant little shrug and shook out the thick skirts of her formal ball gown gracefully. “He’s my designated escort for the evening. Don’t you both look wonderful?” she asked, coming closer to the two boys and reaching out a hand to brush Zechs’s collar appreciatively. “I thought this looked good on you earlier, at the ceremony, but it’s even more striking close to. Your design, darling?”

 

Zechs shook his head. “Treize’s.”

 

“Ah, of course.” Liliya tilted her head, as though listening to the music seeping from the ballroom. “Well, go and enjoy yourselves, boys. You’ve earned it.”

 

Otto smiled and made as though he were going to move away but Zechs, caught by a sudden feeling of affection for this so-stern teacher who’d turned out not-so-stern after all, put a hand on his arm. “We’ll wait with you,” he said quietly. “It’s rather bad manners to leave a lady on her own.”

 

Valadin’s smile warmed. “Well, aren’t you sweet, darling? Thank you.” She drew them back towards her little alcove, away from the flow of people moving into and out of the Grand Hall and leaned back against her pillar again. She was, Zechs realised, displaying herself and her outfit to best advantage.

 

In fairness to the Russian woman though, it was a hell of a best to display. In uniform, Valadin always managed to look austere, stuffy and strict. ‘Pretty’, as Zechs had known she could be from one or two nights out with her and Treize, was not an appellation anyone would have used for her, and ‘beautiful’, as she was now, definitely not. He wondered absently how long it had taken her to do her makeup and arrange her hair into its current upsweep, and how she’d managed to get into her black ball gown alone. He was no connoisseur of women’s clothing but even he knew that the full lace skirts and tightly laced satin bodice must have taken some organising, however much it was making her look a deadly little china doll again.

 

Actually, Zechs found that he wanted to applaud her for making so daring a choice with her outfit. Every other woman in the room – those not in one uniform or another, at least – was wearing a more traditional gown in the pale silks and chiffons appropriate for the nature of the function and the local climate. Amongst them, Liliya’s midnight black was going to stand out just as much as Zechs’s red coat was making him stand out from the hordes of his fellow cadets.

 

“Well, well, three of my favourite people. Where’s the fourth?”

 

Zechs turned his head, meeting Julian Larkspur’s green eyes and smiling back when the Engineering officer grinned at him.

 

“And aren’t we all looking spiffing tonight,” Julian continued. “Liliya, dear, that is one hell of a frock.”

 

Valadin smiled coyly. “Thank you, darling. You look delightful yourself, as always. You really should wear full Dress more often. Shouldn’t he, boys?” she invited, voice soft.

 

Otto merely shrugged. “He knows well enough what I think of him in it,” he said quietly, making Zechs blink at him as it dawned on him what the other boy meant.

 

Realising he had the explanation for where Otto had vanished to for three hours the afternoon before, and reminding himself to ask his roommate what their teacher was like in bed, Zechs ran his eyes over the British officer, looking at him as another man and not his instructor. There was no doubting he was handsome, a few years older than Treize and wearing it well. His sandy blond hair and emerald cat’s eyes were shown off to good effect by the racing green colour of his Dress jacket, and his height and the trim shape he kept himself in made the white breeches, tall boots and long black half cape work wonderfully. Like all the male officers in the Specials, he wore fine white gloves on his hands when he wasn’t in combat kit and like Treize, and now Zechs, he had a dress sabre belted to his waist - a mark of his earning the Specials fencer’s honour. Unlike either Treize or Zechs, though, and in keeping with Otto instead, Larkspur was wearing a variation of the uniform cap on his head, using it to help keep his heavy, wavy hair in place.

 

“Will I do?” Julian asked after a moment, and there was an undertone to his voice that suggested to Zechs that he’d been doing some looking of his own.

 

“Of course, sir,” Zechs replied with perfect military courtesy. Only his eyes conveyed his more personal opinion, that he was sorry he was flying out of the Academy so soon that there wouldn’t be time for them to act on the sparks that were suddenly flaring between them.

 

Larkspur smiled, and then offered his arm to Liliya. “Good, good. Where did you say Khushrenada was?” he asked her as they moved towards the doors of the Hall.

 

“I didn’t, darling,” Valadin answered, her tone tinged with amusement at the little byplay she’d caused. Larkspur had been chiding her for years for her tendency to sleep with the cadets. It was interesting to finally see him come unstuck in that regard, and with not one, but two at the same time. “I believe he’s still getting ready. Either that, or he’s waiting for his partner. He won’t be late, either way.”

 

Larkspur laughed. “I know that!” he chuckled. “I don’t think the man knows how. I tell you what, though,” he said in a lower tone, and with a backwards glance at the two younger men walking a pace or two behind the two senior officers, “things are making a hell of a lot more sense after this afternoon. Did you know he was courting Marquise’s sister? I had no idea the sly bugger was even remotely involved with anyone until she turned up on his arm at the graduation!”

 

Zechs blinked in surprise at Larkspur’s words, then exchanged a glance with Otto and burst into giggles. Leia was getting taken for a lot of people’s sister lately. First Otto had thought she was Treize’s at Christmas, then Aunt Katya had thought she was Zechs’s and now Larkspur was at it, too. He wondered whether he ought to correct the engineer’s mistake, and then recalled that Treize didn’t particularly want people knowing he was married.

 

“He needs to be careful, mind,” Larkspur continued, obviously ignoring Zechs and Otto’s little outburst as caused by something else entirely. “He’s taking a bit of a risk with their reputations. I don’t blame him for it – the woman’s a stunning little thing – but it’s a bit daring her being his partner tonight instead of Marquise’s. It’s going to cause some raised eyebrows. Unless there’s an engagement I don’t know about?”

 

Liliya was smiling herself by now, bemused by her fellow officer’s sudden attention to protocols she wouldn’t have thought he’d give a fig about. “They’re not engaged,” she replied and let her smile grow a little broader. It was only the truth, after all.

 

Larkspur frowned at her answer, then shrugged. “Well, it’s his business, and if Marquise doesn’t raise any objection, then I can’t. I might still see if I can get him to talk later. Once he’s got a few glasses of champagne down him.”

 

Liliya laughed delicately. “Good luck with that, darling. I trained him very well.”

 

*************************

 

 

Otto cast an amused look at Zechs, tickled by the way the blond was sweating.

 

The whole cadet class was lined up at the front of the Great Hall, facing the raised platform that had been used this afternoon as a stage for the officers and visiting dignitaries to receive the new graduates. It was empty now of everything except the evening’s orchestra and a single microphone, currently being used to throw the Academy Commandant’s voice across the crowds assembled behind the cadets.

 

“….It is always an honour and a privilege to come to this moment,” the Commandant said, “when the formalities are done and we can truly welcome our new recruits as the brother and sister officers they are. For many, tonight will be the last time they set foot on the grounds of this Academy. Indeed, some of them will be flying from here tonight, at the conclusion of our celebrations, to take up their new posts across the Earth Sphere. But I know – and every officer here who has had a hand in training and shaping them knows – that the lessons we have taught them and the skills they have learned during their days here will be with them for the rest of their lives.”

 

Polite applause met the commandant’s words and he smiled before continuing.

 

“It has long been tradition for the class Valedictorian to open this Ball with the first waltz, either by dancing with myself or with Major Valadin, the Academy’s senior female Instructor.”

 

Otto blinked in amusement. That tradition was why Zechs was sweating. Treize had seen fit only to warn his student about it a bare few minutes before, laughing whilst he did it and insisting that if Zechs had known in advance that coming first would mean he’d have to dance in public, he’d never have let himself score so well.

 

“Lieutenant Marquise,” the commandant called. “As this year’s Valedictorian, we will ask you to open the Ball for us. Our congratulations on your outstanding achievement here and our best wishes for what will surely be a remarkable future. Would you take your partner, please?”

 

Otto saw Zechs swallow as though he felt sick but he also saw the way the blonde’s shoulders stiffened as he saluted and then turned to offer his hand to the waiting Major Valadin. The crowd parted down the middle, clearing the dance floor with more polite applause as Zechs led Liliya to the rough centre of the space and waited.

 

The commandant, however, wasn’t done talking. “The Special’s traditions form the base of the bond all our officer’s share and are never taken lightly,” he said sternly. “Sometimes, however, breaking them can show more respect than keeping them. I am certain Lieutenant Marquise will not object if, tonight, we vary this one to show honour to not one but three exceptional graduates of this institution.”

 

Zechs shook his head automatically and the Commandant smiled. “Good lad. Officer Noin?” he called. “Would you mind joining Lieutenant Marquise?”

 

Noin, suddenly pale beneath her makeup, picked up the skirt of the lilac ball gown she was wearing and stepped out of her place in the ranks five down from Otto.

 

“Though in the end her final score was beaten by Lieutenant Marquise’s, Officer Noin consistently set new standards of excellence during her three years with us and more, has the distinction of being the only cadet, ever, to have her work on piloting techniques accepted by the Pilot Review Board. She will be returning to us in September as a junior Instructor to teach those techniques to a new class of cadets.”

 

There was another round of clapping as Noin stopped next to Zechs and received a comforting smile from Valadin. Otto remembered the shock on Zechs’s face when they’d learned of Noin’s first assignment that morning before the graduation ceremony. For some reason, the blond had been sure that Noin would be going with the two of them to Treize’s new Wing.

 

“Though it would delight an old man to no end to dance with such a charming young woman,” the Commandant continued, his smile warming as Noin blushed hotly, “tonight I yield that privilege to another. Though not a member of this year’s class, this officer will also be leaving the Academy tonight, having spent the last three years as a very valuable member of its faculty.”

 

Otto felt his eyes widen and he couldn’t resist breaking discipline to turn his head and look around the room. On the dance floor, Valadin looked like the cat who’d gotton the proverbial cream as she gave Noin a little push in the direction of the far side of the room, and Otto realised she’d known what was going to happen.

 

Following the direction of her nudge to Noin, Otto scanned the crowd again and spotted the figure he was after.

 

“Already a decorated and honoured member of our ranks, in a few short weeks this officer will take command of a new Wing, pioneering new ideas and new techniques of his own design that will change the way the Specials operate. Major Khushrenada?”

 

Grinning, Otto watched as Treize hastily handed his champagne glass to his wife, pausing only to listen to her say a few obviously excited words. To his credit, though Otto knew he’d been caught completely off-guard by the summons, Treize didn’t bat an eye as he walked onto the dance floor and took Noin’s hesitantly extended hand with a graceful flourish.

 

There was yet more applause and the Commandant waved it into silence. “To these three, and to those like them, do we trust our future and our children’s future. God Speed, officers,” he bade. “May you shine with the stars!”

 

“May you shine with the stars!” The room echoed back the traditional Specials toast and the Commandant stepped away from the microphone and signalled the orchestra leader. Immediately, the conductor raised his arms and pulled his musicians together into the introduction to a pretty waltz tune. Treize had managed to guide Noin into position a little distance from Zechs and Valadin and he took her into his arms gently as the orchestra started, leading off perfectly into basic footwork as the music cued him. Zechs was a little more hesitant but he followed Treize’s lead well enough and it quickly became clear that both women were more than adequate dancers, allowing Treize to break into more complicated figures and Valadin to do the same, compensating for any slips Zechs might make.

 

The waltz was over quite quickly, the conductor keeping it mercifully short in deference to the fact that he’d had no idea whether the people on the floor would be able to dance or not. Treize turned Noin under his arm, making the hem of her dress flair out prettily and then bowed to her gracefully. Zechs simply stopped in place, stepped back from Valadin and took her hand to kiss it as he bowed to her in his own turn.

 

Both women curtseyed in return and then, as the conductor swung the waltz straight into a sprightly quickstep, Treize passed Noin off to Zechs, took Valadin’s hand in his own and drew her into the dance.

 

The floor quickly filled with whirling couples and Otto had to dodge once or twice as he crossed the room to stand next to his friends. Zechs had managed to secure two glasses of champagne from somewhere and both he and Noin were downing them at some speed.

 

“Very pretty,” Otto said as he drew close.

 

“Fuck off,” Zechs replied, glaring at his friend. “That was the single most embarrassing thing I have ever had to do. I’m going to kill Treize later, I swear!”

 

Otto laughed. “At least he got caught out, too. He had no idea that was coming; he practically had to throw his glass at Leia.”

 

“Didn’t bloody look like it, though, did it?” Zechs groused. “Where is Leia, anyway?” he asked, looking around the room. “Treize is dancing with Vlad and she doesn’t know anyone else.”

 

Otto craned his head, looking for the Duchess’s familiar blonde head. He spotted her standing where she had been and began pushing through the crowd again, Zechs and Noin on his heels.

 

“Otto!” Leia exclaimed gratefully, when she saw him in turn. “Oh, thank goodness for a familiar face.” She gave him her beaming smile. “And you brought Zechs with you – even better. Very nicely done, sweetheart,” she said to the blond boy as she reached out to hug him.

 

“If you say so,” Zechs muttered, returning the hug carefully. Leia made a very elegant figure in her gold silk dress and he didn’t want to muss her. “Treize will be back in a moment. He’s just caught up dancing with Major Valadin. It would have looked funny if we’d both dived off the floor and he had to know I wasn’t going to stay.”

 

Leia smiled at him. “That’s all right. He did warn me he’d likely get pulled away from me for half the evening. I’d never realised how well-known he is,” she said wistfully. “I expect it at home, but here… I suppose I thought he shouldn’t be. He’s young and his rank isn’t all that senior yet.”

 

“It’s not always about the rank for the Specials,” Zechs commented neutrally, and cast about for a way to change the subject. He’d made the decision yesterday, after the scene in the suit shed, that he wasn’t ever going to tell Leia more than he had to about Treize’s professional life. As far as he was concerned, what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. “You haven’t been introduced to Noin yet, have you?” he asked, catching the girl’s hand in his free one and drawing her forward.

 

“No, I don’t believe I have,” Leia replied. “I’ve heard you talk about her, of course. Congratulations, Miss Noin.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Noin said, giving a little curtsey. “It’s annoying having been beaten but…” she shrugged meaningfully and Leia chuckled warmly.

 

“I can just imagine,” she laughed.

 

Zechs waited for her to stop and then made formal introductions. “Lucrezia Noin, Duchess Leia Barton Khushrenada. Leia, Officer Lucrezia Noin,” he said quietly.

 

Leia and Noin smiled at each other again, shifting as though they were going to hug but before they could, Noin’s eyes went wide. “Leia Barton?” she asked, shocked. “Good heavens, but we’ve met before!”

 

Leia’s smile was beatific. “Yes, we have,” she agreed. “I didn’t know if you’d remember,” she confessed. “I didn’t want to say anything if you didn’t. It was several years ago and the circumstances weren’t the best.”

 

Noin was blinking rapidly, even as Zechs cursed himself for forgetting that Noin had been with Treize when he’d been hurt on Leia’s home colony. “But… you were Instructor Treize’s nurse!” she asked, clearly confused. “How….?”

 

Leia bent nearer to the younger woman. “Would you believe he married me?” she said softly. “Christmas wedding in the Chapel on his Moscow estate and everything.”

 

Noin’s eyes widened further, her face breaking into a delighted smile. “Oh, but that’s lovely!” she said. “He didn’t tell me,” she explained. “I had no idea he was married at all. He keeps it very quiet. In fact, I think most of our class think you’re Zechs’s sister and Treize is your guardian the way he is his.” She grimaced at herself. “I know that’s what I was thinking. I was about ready to take strips out of you for not telling me you had family still,” she said to Zechs.

 

Zechs shrugged. “Definitely not my sister,” he said. “Sister-in-law, I suppose. Sort of. But keep it yourself, will you?”

 

Noin nodded. “Well, of course. But why?” she asked. “I mean, it’s no bad thing for him to be married, surely?”

 

Zechs opened his mouth to answer her and found he couldn’t. Involuntarily, his gaze cut across the room, to where Treize and Valadin were still dancing despite the music having changed again into a foxtrot. He could think of at least one person who thought Treize being married was a bad thing – how many others would agree with her, especially after yesterday’s little episode? And what would it do to Treize’s reputation if he was forced to publicly choose between his wife and his mistress, particularly when the mistress seemed to be winning currently.

 

Zechs didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

_Early June AC 191_

_Lake Victoria Military Academy_

 

“You knew, didn’t you?” Treize accused as he swung Liliya into the first figure of the quickstep, feeling her move with him readily, as light in his arms as she always was.

 

“Of course, darling,” she replied with an unapologetic smile. “Should I have warned you? You didn’t little Marquise,” she chided gently.

 

“That was different,” Treize countered. “He’d never have done it if he’d known in advance. He loathes dancing.”

 

“He did look a little like he wanted to be sick,” Liliya laughed, thinking back to Zechs’s pale, nervous face and pinched expression. “It wasn’t very flattering.”

 

“No, I imagine not.” Treize concentrated on weaving the two of them through the increasing crowds of dancers, enjoying the feel of her body against his. “Has anyone told you that’s a marvellous dress?” he asked, looking down at her with banked fire behind his eyes.

 

“Several people, Zechs and Julian amongst them,” Liliya replied. “I’m beginning to gather the impression that it’s liked.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t my original outfit for the Ball, as it happens, but events prompted me to make a change. It goes with the necklace,” she explained, and there was something in her tone that reminded Treize of gathering storm clouds.

 

“Yes, I noticed you were wearing it,” he acknowledged carefully, winding her through a particularly complex figure. “Surprise!” he said weakly, his expression inviting her not to make a fuss.

 

Liliya’s free hand went to her throat as she came back into his hold, her polished fingers caressing the heavy weight of jewellery she was wearing around her slender neck. “I can’t accept it, darling,” she told him quietly.

 

Treize frowned immediately. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say. “Why on Earth not? Don’t you like it?” he asked. “It suits you,” he protested. “I made sure of that.”

 

“I’m sure you did, darling, and I do like it,” the Russian woman admitted. “You have excellent taste, as always, and I thought you should see me wear it this once,” she said. “But I’m very much afraid I’m going to have to return it to you. Darling, it could get you into a world of trouble.”

 

Treize was still frowning. “And if I won’t take it back?” he asked. “There was no note on the box; you can’t be certain I was the one to give it to you.”

 

Liliya sighed softly. “Don’t be difficult, darling.”

 

The younger officer shook his head. “I’m not intending to be, and I could say the same to you. Just how do you think it’s going to get me into trouble in any case? Very few people actually know I made the purchase and there’s no one to take me to task over how I spend my money anyway.”

 

“You have a family to provide for,” Liliya pointed out, a little sharply. “You should be thinking of your daughter’s inheritance,” she said. “Not buying your co-workers expensive antique jewellery.” She sighed, dropping her gaze form his in a way Treize had never seen before from the forthright Major Valadin. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have to sit down when I opened the box, darling,” she murmured softly, forcing him to bend closer to hear her. “And I’m not going to pretend that I’m not grateful for the thought, but I can’t keep it. It simply isn’t appropriate. What would your wife say if she knew you were buying another woman jewellery?”

 

“I doubt she’d care,” Treize lied. If he had his way, Leia would never learn that Liliya’s current necklace had been a present from her husband. Certainly, Treize would never tell her that he’d left it lying in its discreet leather case on the Major’s bed after spending the night in it. Or that he’d arranged the purchase when he’d been at home during the Easter break, right in the middle of the only real fight they’d ever had in their marriage, on one of the walks he’d found himself taking to clear his head.

 

“Do you think so, darling?” Valadin asked quietly, her eyes saying she’d seen through his lie. “What about little Marquise, then? What do you think he’d say?”

 

Treize snorted. “He really wouldn’t care, other than to think it pretty. And even if he did, I’m sure he’d understand my reasoning.”

 

“Oh?” Liliya was moving at Treize’s instructions still, following his lead through a spin turn and lock step. “What was your reasoning, then, darling? If you can adequately explain why you felt it necessary to leave… what is it, precisely?… on my pillow, I may change my mind.”

 

“Edwardian platinum,” Treize answered her immediately. “Hall marked from about 1910 pre-colony, set with diamond and black diamond. It’s French made – the case is the Cartier original – and yes, it’s rather valuable. That was the idea,” he said firmly to her raised eyebrows and challenging gaze.

 

“Was it, now?” Liliya asked, but her hand had gone to the necklace again. She’d known it was an expensive piece but not just how expensive. What Treize had just told her put at least another zero on any value she’d been imagining and made her even more sure that she couldn’t accept it from him. Whatever she’d been thinking before, now she was certain. “Treize, darling, tell me your wife has jewellery as valuable as this,” she demanded, wondering just how serious a mistake he’d made.

 

Treize merely smiled at her. “Of course she does,” he replied. “Not that I’ve bought her, admittedly, and not that she’s particularly fond of wearing the pieces but there are sets in the family vault that make that little thing seem like a bauble. And, no,” he added, seeing her next question in her eyes before she asked it. “I won’t tell you what I paid for it.”

 

He drew her close as they spun through another turn. “Lilishka, please,” he said quietly. “Don’t fight me over this. It’s little enough I can do for you as it is. You’ve been a friend, more than a friend, for half my life and I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much you mean to me. There are things in the last few years I wouldn’t have coped with half so well without you. Let me do it for that.” He tightened his grip on her. “It’s security, nothing more.”

 

Liliya’s grey eyes widened in surprise. “Security?” she repeated softly. Her hand went to her throat again and she gazed up at Treize questioningly. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean what I say,” Treize answered with a diffident shrug. “There was a note in the case, under the lining, explaining but you might not have seen it.” He waited until Liliya nodded hesitantly, then continued. “Oh. Well, it didn’t say much. Just stated the insurance details and explained that my agents will be willing to help you if you ever need to, ah, liquidate the asset.”

 

“Liquidate…?” Liliya tilted her head, then caught her breath as Treize’s meaning finally came clear. “Oh, darling,” she breathed. With her fellow officer’s explanation, it was finally obvious that what she was wearing wound her neck wasn’t just a pretty and costly bit of jewellery, but Treize’s way of looking after her when he might well never see her again. He was granting her, with this one present, the guarantee that no matter what happened to her, she would never have to worry about money again

 

It was the kind of certainty that Liliya could never have managed alone. The only female child of a cadet-branch Russian noble, she had the title to match Treize’s but not the land, the property, or the bank accounts. What little her family did have, she’d rejected by insisting on her career in the Specials, and though her salary was good, it was drop in the ocean compared to Treize’s net worth.

 

“I should be insulted, darling,” Liliya said softly. “Am I to believe you don’t think I can look after myself?” She shook her head. “Thank you, Sasha,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful and I love you for it.”

 

Treize’s expression was as soft as Liliya thought it had ever been as he looked down at her. “You’re welcome,” he replied quietly. The music changed, flowing into a foxtrot, and Treize drew Liliya a little closer as they moved into the slower, more intimate dance.

 

The older officer gave the younger a few bars, enjoying moving with him easily and the feel of his gloved hands on her fingers and bare back, then tilted her gaze back to his and smiled wickedly. “Speaking of presents,” Liliya said quietly. “I have one for you.”

 

She lifted one hand from his shoulder to brush behind her left ear, as though she were checking her hair, and then pulled him away from the dance floor without it ever seeming as though she was doing anything at all.

 

Treize followed her lead willingly enough, wondering what she was up to. He hoped she wasn’t going to ask him to leave the Ball – that was the one thing he couldn’t do – and was more than a little relieved when she drew the two of them to a halt in a corner by the main doors.

 

“Lils?” he asked curiously, and she shushed him with a little wave.

 

“This new command of yours, darling,” she began, “I’m given to understand you haven’t chosen your Equerry yet?”

 

Treize nodded, wondering what this had to do with anything “That’s true,” he agreed, puzzled. “I offered the post to Lucrezia Noin but she turned me down for the Instructor’s position and I don’t quite know where to start looking for a second choice. It’s a tricky post to fill,” he confessed. “I’ve never served in the role and I’ve never had the rank to merit it attached to my command before, so I’m a little lost.”

 

Treize sighed softly, looking at Liliya intently. “I realise you probably want to get off-base for the break but would you mind staying behind tomorrow to go through service records with me?” he asked. “I asked Personnel for recommendations and I’d like to get the matter settled before I fly back to Russia.”

 

The older officer smiled at him winningly. “I’d be glad to, darling, but perhaps…. Ah!” she exclaimed, apparently seeing something that Treize didn’t. “I may already have found the solution for you,” she said impishly.

 

Treize blinked, taken aback, as Liliya looked to a figure just emerging from the edge of the crowd and beckoned with one hand.

 

“I’ll confess, darling,” Liliya said as the figure became clear as that of a slender girl in a rose-pink dress. “I’ve been planning this for as long as I’ve known you were leaving the Academy. Luca Noin would have been a good choice for your Equerry from a professional perspective but not, perhaps, from a personal one.” She tilted her head in a way that was unique to her and looked at Treize from under veiled lashes. “You’ll need your Equerry to be, ah, more than Luca could have been, I think.”

 

Treize coloured hotly as he realised what Valadin was implying but found himself unable to resist looking at the girl who had drawn level with the Russian Major curiously.

 

“Major Valadin,” the girl greeted politely, and Treize was struck by the lovely, low tone of her voice. “Major Khushrenada, a pleasure to meet you.”

 

She put out a manicured hand and Treize found himself reaching to take it automatically, caught by the flash of her velvety brown eyes he’d had when she looked up at him.

 

He kissed the back of her hand lightly and she blushed under the touch. Clearly, she’d been expecting him only to shake her hand, though why that would be the case, Treize didn’t know. He’d offered her only the greeting due a pretty lady from any gentleman.

 

Liliya laughed at the byplay between them softly. “Treize, darling, this is Lieutenant Anne Une,” she said. “She’s the daughter of the late Count Une and the most apt pupil I’ve ever had. She’ll make you an excellent Equerry, I think.”

 

Treize lifted an eyebrow, caught between amusement at Valadin’s scheming and interest in the girl she was suggesting. “Lady Une,” he said quietly, testing the words, and won himself another curious glance from pretty brown eyes.

 

“If it would suit you, yes, your Excellency,” Une replied carefully.

 

Treize frowned in surprise. “Your Grace,” he corrected automatically, ignoring Valadin laughing again. “Are you not familiar with the Peerage?” he asked, wondering if Liliya really could have missed something so basic in the girl’s education. If Une was going to get all the honorific titles wrong, she’d ruled herself out of the running for his Equerry already. Half of the job was to oversee his communications; it would be a disaster to have someone in the post who couldn’t handle the Nobility.

 

Une looked at him sharply. “Of course I am,” she corrected. “Being a Countess, I’d have to be. I merely addressed you the way I thought suited you most.” She smiled, the expression curiously secretive and subtle. “I have no doubt you are gracious, sir, but that title belongs to so many who aren’t that it means very little. Something more unique fits you better, and it never hurts to remind people of your quality.”

 

Treize looked at her steadily. “Oh?” he asked. “So the graceful First Lady thinks her commanding Duke should strive for excellence?”

 

“I think everyone should strive for excellence, sir,” Une answered him honestly, acknowledging the play on the meaning of her names with a bob of her head, and Treize found himself returning her smile.

 

“Well said, Lady Une,” he approved and held out his hand. “Care to dance?” he asked. “As my Equerry, you’d likely find yourself attending many similar functions in the future. It might be sensible to see if we can dance together before we commit to anything further.”

 

Une took his hand without hesitation. “As you command, your Excellency,” she agreed.

 

Treize found himself looking at her again, caught by her demure agreement to his suggestion. It was a moment before he could make himself glance up at the waiting Valadin, and he was glad that she seemed to be taking his distraction well. The older woman was smiling at him knowingly and she waved him towards the dance floor as he opened his mouth to excuse himself.

 

“Go, darling,” she ordered. “I shall amuse myself well enough. Go and see if you and Anne are at all compatible.”

 

Gratefully, Treize nodded to the Russian woman and stepped away without saying anything else, taking Lady Une with him, her little hand now tucked firmly into his arm.

 

Valadin watched as they found a space on the dance floor and let her smile turn a touch bitter as Une stepped into Treize’s hold easily, her hand settling on his shoulder as though they’d danced together hundreds of times. However gratifying it was to see the work of eighteen months pay off, however pleasing to know that Une was as perfect a match for Treize as Liliya had moulded her to be, it was still painful to see herself so easily replaced.

 

Liliya kept her eyes on her two protégés for a few bars, then, satisfied, she turned on her heel and slipped from the hall, leaving them to learn each other as she walked out into the silent, shadowed grounds of the empty Academy.

 

 

*********************

 

 

Across the Grand Hall, two pairs of blue eyes caught the Russian Major’s departure with curiosity.

 

Zechs and Leia exchanged puzzled glances at Valadin’s early leaving but, as Leia returned to her conversation with Otto and Noin, only Zechs thought to follow his curiosity through.

 

If Valadin had left the Ball, then where was Treize?

 

The younger man scanned the Hall in sweeps, searching for his friend’s tall, distinctive figure. He frowned when he spotted Treize in the middle of the swirling dance floor, and frowned more when he caught sight of the woman he was dancing with.

 

The pretty, chestnut-haired girl in the older man’s arms was no-one Zechs could put a name too, although she did seem vaguely familiar from somewhere, and the blond might have dismissed her out of hand as a random partner, if he hadn’t noted the way Treize was looking at her.

 

The heated, interested expression was subtle but it was unmistakable if you knew Treize well enough and seeing it sent chills through Zechs. Without him realising it, his hand tightened on the empty champagne flute he was still holding and his eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses. Whoever the girl was, she was sparking some sort of response from his friend, and the blond didn’t like it.

 

“Zechs?” Otto whispered suddenly, breaking Zechs’s concentration with a touch to his hand. “Gorgeous, are you okay? That glass is about to shatter. What are you looking at that’s gotten you so riled up?” He wrapped his fingers around Zechs’s and took the flute from him, looking up worriedly.

 

Zechs tore his gaze from Treize for a moment, long enough to give the smaller boy a reassuring pat on the arm. “Nothing,” he promised. “I’m fine,” he insisted, and smiled back when Otto grinned at him warmly.

 

By the time Zechs could look for his surrogate brother again, Treize was walking across the hall towards their group and his dance partner was nowhere to be seen.

 

Her absence didn’t stop Zechs from wondering who she was and knowing with dreadful certainty that he was going to see her again.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we move into Part Two....

# 

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing Forward Operating Base_

 

“Oh, my God, is it ever going to stop raining?” Otto spluttered, looking up as the door to the Mess opened and shut again in a hurry, admitting a tall figure huddled bravely against the weather.

 

Zechs looked up from his collar and smiled ruefully at his friend. He brushed the water off his trench coat in a futile effort to stay dry and shook his sopping head slowly. “Doesn’t look like it,” he replied quietly.

 

“Wonderful!” Otto exclaimed. “Honestly, who in God’s name thought it was a good idea to put a major spaceport in what has to be the wettest place on Earth? How the hell do they launch?”

 

Zechs chuckled. “I have no idea, but they do,” he said. He glanced out of the window of the temporary structure and shook his head again, sprinkling more water onto the floor from the ends of his ponytail.

 

He had to acknowledge that Otto had a point. Whoever had thought Christmas Island a good place for a spaceport needed to be shot. In the four weeks since Zechs had arrived at his new posting there hadn’t been a single day without a torrential downpour and it didn’t surprise him at all that everyone else was as sick of it as he was.

 

In truth, it was hard not to get annoyed when everything was wet, constantly. Clothing was damp and sticky, floors were running with puddles and the suits were corroding despite the efforts of the engineers to protect them because the temporary base they were on didn’t have the same controlled hangers as the permanent stations like the nearby New Edwards did.

 

Zechs would have commiserated with his classmate but he no longer had that luxury. Glancing back at the inside of the mess hall, he shrugged and asked the question he’d come to ask. “Have you seen the Commander this evening?” he enquired politely of the room and got a sea of negative headshakes as replies.

 

Only Otto varied his response. Casting his friend an assessing glance and then an acknowledging smile, the dark haired pilot tilted his head as he spoke. “No, sir,” he replied. “Sorry, sir. Have you tried the simulation suites?” Otto suggested.

 

Zechs smiled back, readily, grateful again for Otto’s ready mind and affable personality. “Not yet, Officer,” he said steadily. “Thank you for the suggestion.”

 

He exchanged a meaningful glance with the other boy, and then ducked back out of the mess, leaving the smaller man to the company of his fellow pilots.

 

As Zechs hunched his shoulders against the rain again, he reflected that Otto had taken Zechs’s promotion over his head with amazingly good grace, never showing any issue with it at all. He seemingly had no trouble with splitting his approach to his former roommate, switching between calling Zechs ‘sir’ in public and their more intimate forms of address in private effortlessly and never blurring the line between them even slightly. What should have placed strain on their friendship, hadn’t, because Otto had refused to let it and when Zechs, in the first few days of their posting, had been about ready to scream from the stress of his new responsibilities, it had been Otto who had soothed him back to some version of normality.

 

Zechs only hoped Otto knew how grateful he was.

 

A sudden gust of wind blew icy drops of rain straight down the upturned collar of Zechs’s coat and he swore viciously as he broke into a run across the compound, ducking under every available bit of shelter as he headed for the computer labs at the far end, following Otto’s suggestion.

 

He keyed his security codes into the panel by the door swiftly, barely able to make himself stand still as he waited for the scanner to read his fingerprint. The door beeped eventually and Zechs yanked it open and skittered inside into the dryness and relative warmth.

 

Shucking his coat with a disgusted grimace, Zechs folded it over one arm and ran a hasty hand through his straggly hair, neatening it as much as he could under the circumstances. Treize, he thought, would probably still have something to say about his appearance – Zechs was rapidly learning the older man had a _thing_ about his officers’ presentation – but he’d just have to forgive him this once. It was not possible, as far as Zechs was concerned, to spend ten hours conducting and supervising shakedown runs on suits, and then another two running around a rain sodden base in search of an elusive superior, and still look as though one had just stepped off a parade ground.

 

Not that it looked like Zechs had found Treize for him to criticize the younger man yet. The computer labs just weren’t that big and there was no hint of movement in either of the workshops, any of the four programming bays or in the echoing, empty simulation room.

 

“Hello?” Zechs called, hoping against hope, and cursed again when there was no answer. “Bugger!”

 

Tugging his sodden coat back on with a shiver at the wet chill of it, Zechs turned on his heel and moved back towards the main door.

 

He paused before he opened it, an idea coming to him. Rooting in one pocket, he found his slim little phone and pressed the fourth of his speed dial buttons, putting the phone to his ear as it began to ring.

 

The recipient of the call answered it swiftly.

 

“Captain Une,” the Lady snapped. “Yes?”

 

“Une, is Treize back in his office yet?” Zechs asked, attempting to keep his conversation with his commander’s new Equerry to the absolute minimum. There was nothing about Captain Anne Une that Zechs liked, and there hadn’t been since the moment he’d first seen her dancing in Treize’s hold at the Graduation Ball a month before.

 

He was still trying to decide whether or not it was a good thing that the feeling was definitely mutual. He and Une had begun sniping at each other almost from the moment Treize had formally introduced them, much to the older man’s bewilderment, and they’d had their first full argument less than a day later.

 

Accordingly, Une’s already chilly voice took on tones that could have frozen outer space as she replied. “No, Lieutenant, he is not,” the young woman said frostily, emphasising Zechs’s lesser rank heavily.

 

“Damn it!” Zechs swore. “Do you know where he is?” he asked unwillingly. The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to Une for anything, but he couldn’t see much choice. “I’ve been trying to track him down for over an hour,” he admitted curtly, hedging the true length of time he’d been searching as much as he could.

 

He could hear Une’s vicious smirk down the phone. “Perhaps you should make a proper appointment, then,” the Lady suggested smugly, “instead of expecting His Excellency to be at your beck and call. It would be far more appropriate if you curtailed your tendency to traipse in and out of his working spaces as the whim takes you in any case.”

 

Zechs snorted dismissively, giving that suggestion the consideration it deserved in his view. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” he asked darkly. “Dare to dream, Une. The devil will be ice-skating in hell before I make an appointment with you to speak to my own brother!”

 

Une hissed in reply and Zechs knew his trump card had, once again, won this match for him.

 

Within moments of speaking to her on the flight to the new base, Zechs had known Lady Une was going to be a problem. The instinctive attraction to her Zechs had seen in Treize at the Ball hadn’t lessened for the seven days that had passed, and when Treize had informed the younger man that Une as his Equerry had been Valadin’s suggestion, Zechs had been torn with groaning at his own stupidity and smacking Treize around the ear for his.

 

A bit of judicious digging had confirmed all Zechs’s worst fears about Une. She wasn’t just Valadin’s suggestion – she was Valadin’s protégé. A class ahead of Zechs, she had been the Russian woman’s star pupil at the Academy during her time there – a trend continued after her graduation as she rapidly made her name as Valadin’s most used and most successful Intelligence operative. Her future had seemed set until she’d abruptly withdrawn from the field to join Treize’s new Wing.

 

The on-paper reason for the career shift had been that Une was reaching the limit of missions any wet work agent could undertake without a lengthy break. As far as the Specials were concerned, posting her with Treize made sense because it allowed her that break whilst lending the new Wing a dynamic no predecessor had ever had access to through the Lady’s expertise in Covert Operations.

 

Zechs, however, knew full well that the on-paper reason was a load of rot. Une was Treize’s Equerry because Valadin wished her to be, and Valadin had wished her to be because she’d decided her darling Treize simply _couldn’t_ be without a mistress to distract him from the stress of his posting.

 

The hell of it was, Zechs might have agreed with her, if she’d asked him. It was almost a year since he’d thrown a fit at finding out Treize was sleeping with his Russian fellow officer, and the lessons he’d learned in that year, both about himself and those around him, had left him a very different person to the boy he’d been then. The naïve image he’d had of the older man’s perfect fairytale marriage was an idea best left as just that – an idea. Particularly in light of Leia’s stunningly inappropriate attitude to her husband’s career.

 

When it came down to it – and however much Zechs hated that Treize had to break his marriage vows for it – it wasn’t fair of Zechs to whine about Treize’s relationship with Valadin when his own with Otto was remarkably similar. Nor could the blond begrudge his surrogate brother the right to a comfort and a release he, himself, relied on more and more.

 

With Valadin now half a world away at Lake Victoria, and Leia, for the moment, almost as far away in Moscow, Zechs had actually been expecting Treize to find himself a new lover before too long. He’d steeled himself against the idea that, sooner rather than later, there would be some woman or another who would be sharing his friend’s bed. He’d even braced himself to be nice about it, both to the woman, or women, in question and to Treize himself.

 

Une, though, Une was a different proposition. Zechs had seen Treize interacting with the young woman on several occasions and, on each one, she’d pulled the most remarkable switch in behaviour he’d ever witnessed from anyone. Zechs could never fault Une’s competence as an officer but, whilst he and the rest of the wing were rapidly coming to regard her as a hard-nosed bitch, with Treize she was a completely different person, soft and girlish and entirely accommodating. It made her a wonderful fusion of Liliya’s cool practicality and Leia’s wide-eyed devotion, and Zechs knew full and well who would have been responsible for teaching her to act like that.

 

It also made her a threat that no other woman would have been. By morphing herself between the two characters, Une made herself appeal to Treize on more than one level. She was a match for his professional self – as Liliya had been before her – but she also crossed the line into territory that had previously been Leia’s alone, compromising the older man’s ties to his wife. There was softness in Treize’s eyes when he spoke to his Equerry that Zechs had never thought would be there for anyone other than Leia, and the blond didn’t like it. If Treize was that drawn to Une now, when he’d only known her a month, what was going to happen in six months or a year or two years in the future?

 

In accordance with his fears, Zechs had been openly hostile with Une from the moment they’d been introduced, and it hadn’t taken long before she’d responded in kind. At first, it probably had been only as a response, but she’d soon realised that Zechs was more to Treize than just an officer, and that she didn’t like it. If Zechs disapproved, and Treize gave the blond’s opinion weight, then he was bad news for her plans to seduce her commander. She’d immediately set about trying to drive a wedge into the two men’s friendship, and been more than a little upset when she’d learned why it was never going to work.

 

By sheer chance Une had overheard a private conversation between the two men one evening, listening in wide-eyed surprise as Treize teased Zechs with the mocking appellation of ‘brat.’ It was a wonderfully multi-lingual tweak on the older man’s part and Une, primed by Liliya, had known enough to translate. What was a derogatory term in the English language for an annoying child, was also an affectionate Russian word for ‘little brother’.

 

Zechs still didn’t know whether she’d asked Treize about it – he suspected not – but she’d wasted no time in confronting him about it, demanding to know what Treize had meant by the phrase. The blonde’s answer hadn’t pleased her one little bit, particularly since he’d conveniently forgotten to mention that the relationship was adoptive only.

 

The fact that he’d made rather a thing about telling Une just how close he and his sister-in-law were probably hadn’t helped much either. That threat hadn’t needed spelling out at all.

 

“Your brother he may be,” Une spat at him now, breaking the momentary silence that had echoed down the line, “but he is also still your Wing Commander. On duty, in uniform, your first and only response to His Excellency should be as his Lieutenant. Personal concerns have no place!”

 

Quite true, but Zechs couldn’t admit that to her or he’d neutralise his one sure-fire weapon against her. Besides, it was a bit rich given the source and he had no trouble saying so. “You might want to remember that yourself, Une,” he bit off. “You don’t know where he is?” he asked again, over her sharply indrawn breath.

 

Une’s attitude shifted from outraged to superior in the space of one breath. “I didn’t say that,” she answered smugly. “I merely said His Excellency wasn’t in his office.” She paused for a moment, giving Zechs chance to start cursing her in his head, then continued smartly, “His Excellency received a video call at just gone seven, which he had directed to his study. Since he hasn’t yet signed off with me for the day, I would presume that he is still dealing with it.”

 

His study. Of course. Zechs could have smacked himself for his stupidity. He’d thought to check the older man’s official office but not the little space Treize had fashioned for himself in the suite of rooms he’d been assigned. It wasn’t much more than a glorified supply closet – probably had been a supply closet or an airing cupboard at some point – but it was large enough to fit a little desk and chair, a small couch and a cupboard-come-end table in and still leave just about enough room to move around. In addition to the furniture, Treize had added several shelves of books and computer discs, and then promptly taken to spending much of his free time in the room, most often with the door firmly locked behind him.

 

Why Zechs hadn’t thought of it earlier, he didn’t know. Perhaps all the rain was rotting his brain. “His study. Right,” he said and snapped his phone closed without so much as a goodbye.

 

Well, at least it was close. Pushing open the door of the computer suite, Zechs stepped out into the rain again and sprinted across the open ground of the base, cutting a corner of it to reach the officer’s quarters as quickly as possible. The dull grey, prefab blocks were nothing like the elegant apartments of the Academy but at least they were dry and Zechs stepped inside the one that housed the senior officer’s rooms with a mix of gratitude and annoyance. It was nice to be out of the rain but it was bloody infuriating that he’d spent two hours running around in it only to find his quarry less than fifty yards from Zechs’s own quarters and right where it had been most obvious he would be.

 

Shedding his sopping coat again, Zechs strode down the narrow central corridor to the middle of three doors on the right hand side and rapped firmly on the wooden panel.

 

It took Treize a moment or two to open the door and he seemed more than a bit surprised to see Zechs when he did.

 

“Zechs?” he asked, fingers still on the door handle. “Is something wrong?”

 

Zechs hesitated a second before answering, casting his friend a speculative look from under his darkened glasses. Treize was still in full uniform, still as perfectly neat and pristine as he always was, the very picture of cool military discipline, and yet there was something just a little bit ruffled about him. If Zechs hadn’t known Une was across the complex in the offices, he’d immediately have wondered if she were out of sight somewhere behind Treize. He’d also have wondered what the two of them had been doing when he knocked.

 

“Sorry, sir,” Zechs apologised when Treize’s raised eyebrow made him aware he’d been staring just a moment too long. “Nothing’s wrong, sir. I was just wanting to give you my sign-off report.”

 

It won him the surprised look Zechs had thought he would get, Treize letting go of his door handle to reach for his pocket watch and check the time. “Zechs,” the older man said, sounding puzzled. “It’s after eight. You should have gone off-duty more than two hours ago.”


	12. Chapter 12

_“Zechs,” the older man said, sounding puzzled. “It’s after eight. You should have gone off-duty more than two hours ago.”_

 

“I’ve been trying to find you,” Zechs replied honestly. “I can’t turn the watch over until I’ve handed in my report.”

 

“And you couldn’t have left the damned thing with Une?” Treize demanded, his tone of voice showing exasperation. “Or was she not in the Office, either?”

 

Zechs nodded reluctantly. “She was, but….”

 

“But?” Treize repeated. He shook his head. “Zechs, half of Une’s job is to take and filter watch reports for me. I’d appreciate it if you’d let her do it in the future. If I have to start hearing every report personally, I’ll never sleep.” He tilted his head, pocketing his watch again before reaching out to pull gently on a strand of Zechs’s sopping wet hair affectionately. “It might have saved you a thorough soaking, as well,” he tweaked. “If you take sick again, don’t expect me to be nearly so sympathetic.”

 

Zechs’s expression turned rebellious as he shifted his head to free his hair from Treize’s hold and then blew it out of his eyes in annoyance. “You weren’t sympathetic last time!” he protested. “You laughed at me!”

 

“It was funny,” Treize chuckled, utterly without remorse. “I’ve never seen anyone sneeze so many times without a break.”

 

Zechs, like ninety percent of the soldiers on the base, had reacted to two weeks of constant drenching by coming down with a vicious head cold. Rarely ever actually ill before, Zechs had resented every moment he’d spent stuffy and bumbling, cursing and bitching through his bouts of sneezing and running fever. His disgust hadn’t been improved by an irritatingly healthy Treize snickering at him constantly and mockingly calling the illness ‘fledgling flu’.

 

“Get bent, sir,” Zechs replied now, his tone as polite as his words were not.

 

Treize laughed. “I should court-martial you, Lieutenant,” he said. “Come in, baby bird, and I’ll pour you a drink whilst you give me that report.”

 

Zechs moved obediently forward as Treize stepped back from his door. “I’d prefer a towel,” he muttered darkly. “And don’t call me that!”

 

The older man laughed again. “Why not? It’s what you are.”

 

‘Fledgling’, as Zechs and his classmates had quickly learned, was the Specials term for any newly-commissioned pilot; most specifically, one who had yet to earn his or her wings by being blooded in combat. Zechs, by dint of his double promotion and customised uniform, had avoided the worst of the hazing by appearing to be something he wasn’t but Otto and the other new pilots had taken endless ribbing from the seasoned hands. ‘Baby bird’ was the particular term the older pilots applied to any rookie they’d like to ‘pluck’ and Zechs had just about died from shock the first time Treize had used it to him.

 

“Treize,” Zechs started, as Treize closed the door behind him and walked across the little space of his living area, “are you _sure_ you know what that means?” he asked doubtfully. “Because you keep using it, and it’s really not appropriate.”

 

He refused to look too closely at the way his breath caught a little every time Treize did use the term – the man was his adopted brother, and straight besides.

 

Treize chuckled as he opened one of the two doors on the far side of the room for a moment. “Yes, I know what it means, Zechs,” he replied dryly. “I didn’t give you the designation – I agree, it’s wildly, wildly wrong between us – but once it’s given by one of us, the rest are honour-bound to use it.” He turned back from whatever he was doing and the towel hit Zechs square in the face a moment later. “Sorry.”

 

“Thank you,” Zechs replied, and just what he was replying to wasn’t clear – the drawlingly sarcastic words would have done for either Treize’s words or his actions just as well.

 

The younger man pulled the tie from his sopping hair and began rubbing the freed strands with the towel briskly. “You might,” he said, and Treize had to listen to make out the indistinct words from under the thick fabric, “want to tell whoever did decide to call me that to come and speak to me directly.” He tossed his head back, wrapping the crumpled towel around his neck and making his hair fluff around him wildly. His grin was cuttingly sharp and purely wicked. “There’s very little left to ‘pluck’, but they’re welcome to have a go.”

 

If Zechs had said that a year before, Treize would have had a fit. If he’d said it six months ago, there would have been a row. Even two months ago, Treize wouldn’t have been happy. Now, the only sign that he was uncomfortable with it was in the momentary pause before he gave a resigned smile and shook his head. “Shameless brat.”

 

Zechs resettled his glasses onto the end of his nose and played his own part in the careful understanding they’d come to by ignoring Treize’s pause. “Admittedly.”

 

For the hundredth time in the six weeks since he’d graduated, Zechs found himself wondering over all the new things he was learning about his oldest friend.

 

He’d thought, after three years at Lake Victoria with the man, that he’d seen everything there was to see about the personality Treize adopted in his military capacity but, on arrival at their new base, Zechs had quickly begun to learn that he was wrong about that. The professional persona he’d become familiar with at the Academy had been a variation crafted specifically for that environment – either that, or Zechs, as a cadet, had been excluded from far more than he’d been aware of at the time

 

Instructor Treize had been a cool, slightly aloof personality, as intimidating as he was welcoming and certainly not given to the type of innuendo-laden teasing he was inflicting on Zechs with the ‘fledgling’ remarks. He’d been close with Major Valadin and Zechs had been aware of a vague friendship with Major Larkspur but, other than that, he wouldn’t have said Treize had been inclined to have any time for his fellow officers at the Academy. Zechs had assumed that both traits would hold over now.

 

He’d been dead wrong on both counts. Commander Treize had thrown himself into the companionship of his fellow officers wholeheartedly, melding seamlessly with the veterans and hazing the rookies as though he’d done it every day of his life. Their second night on the base – they’d all been too exhausted the first – he’d had the Mess staff throw together a cold buffet, called all the command staff to the ward room, turned on a radio and provided a truly astonishing variety of liquor for them all to drink as they got to know one another.

 

Zechs hadn’t kept track of him all evening but there had been little snippets throughout the party. He had clear recollections of Treize, a glass in one hand and cards in the other, chattering in French with his new second in command as they played Blackjack, and of listening in mordant fascination as the redhead discussed the assets of one the tactical officers with him and one of the Squadron Leads.

 

Treize had withdrawn a little distance after that, as befit his status as their commander, but Zechs was still surprised by how comfortable he seemed with everyone. On the nights he wasn’t working, he cheerfully sat down for his meals with whoever was around and, more than once, Zechs had seen him in casual conversation with people.

 

It had taken a baffled Zechs almost a week to realise that Treize wasn’t playing a part for the sake of his command – this was the officer he’d always been. Unlike Zechs himself, who’d never known anything beyond the Academy, Treize had seen two years of front line service to earn his promotions to Lieutenant and Captain. He’d been part of a unit before, he was a proven, experienced pilot and the officers he was associating with were his own handpicked choices – young, for the most part, aristocratic and brilliant, his peers if not his equals.

 

“Give me this report, then,” Treize said, dragging Zechs from his reverie as he held out a hand for the towel.

 

Zechs unhooked the fabric from around his neck and handed it over, then rooted under the heavy wool of his jacket, fingers searching the tiny concealed pockets hidden in the lining of his coat just beneath the placket. He found the little data chip and pulled it free, offering that out as well as Treize returned from tossing the damp towel into what seemed to be his laundry basket.

 

“Thank you,” Treize said automatically, taking the chip. He crossed the room again and opened the second door, flicking the light switch on the wall as he revealed his little study.

 

“Zechs?” he asked, and the younger man realised that his commander wanted him to follow. He turned his head for a moment, looking for somewhere to put his coat, and settled for draping it over one of the radiators in the vain hope that it would start to dry out, then went after Treize and stopped in the door to the little study.

 

It was obvious as soon as Zechs saw the room that Une had been right in her description of where Treize was and what he was doing. The chair by the little desk was still pulled out and there was a half-empty coffee cup sitting on the pristine surface next to the familiar laptop. The computer itself was open, the screen glowing with the rotating Specials logo to show that it was switched on and in power saving mode.

 

It was a clear sign that Zechs’s knock had interrupted Treize in the middle of something because he almost never left his computer logged on and alone. He was paranoid about data security in a way that made Zechs wonder what he had stored on his hard drive – even Zechs wasn’t allowed to touch his computer unless Treize was standing right behind him the entire time and watching what he looked at.

 

Without a word to the younger man, Treize sat down at his desk again and keyed in the password that would bring the computer back into working mode, typing so fluidly that Zechs would have struggled to catch what he keyed even if he’d been watching for it.

 

The screen glowed to life immediately, program icons arranged neatly across the desktop. There was a minimised window in the toolbar at the bottom and, as Zechs took his first proper step into the room, he could see that it was the communications program, highlighted green to show that the call had been both planetary international and from a non-secured, non-military source.

 

There was only one person Zechs could think who fit that description and who would be calling Treize at this time in the evening, and Zechs didn’t know of a reason why she would. The blond opened his mouth to ask, but Treize spun the data disc up at the same moment and began reading with such intensity that Zechs didn’t dare interrupt him.

 

“You finally broke the two minute stand-by time, I see,” Treize commented after a few minutes had passed in silence.

 

Zechs nodded immediately. “Finally,” he agreed. “But it took some doing and I’m not sure it’ll ever be repeatable. 2.30 might be the best workable target we can hope for.”

 

Treize immediately shook his head. “Standard time for the Specials is two minutes, forty-five seconds. A take-off time of 2.30 from full stand-by isn’t different enough. We’re supposed to be creating a fast-response intervention force. We need to show significant improvements over what’s already in play to justify the program.”

 

Zechs was aware of that, but… “Sir, with respect, 2.45 is the standard time for the Specials in unmodified, single-suit-type Squadrons. There is no benchmark for what we’re trying to do. It’s a more complicated procedure and it shows in the timing,” he said.

 

Treize turned in his chair, waving Zechs to a seat on his couch. “I appreciate that,” he replied, “but there’s no way to explain that kind of detail to the UESA funding bodies. All they’ll see are the numbers on the reports I have to submit at the end of the month, and, at the moment, that will have them bullying General Catalonia to shut us down before we really start. We need to do better.”

 

Zechs sighed. He and Treize had been arguing this point from almost the moment they’d first sat down in Treize’s office in his Moscow house to start looking over the protocols for the new Wing. The ‘stand-by time’ was the speed at which an on-alert suit Squadron, its pilots in full gear and its mecha warmed and ready, could be mobilised into combat. The Academy trained for two minutes and forty-five seconds as the standard; Treize wanted to shave a full forty-five seconds off that time. His new Wing was supposed to be faster and more flexible in response to any sort of threat and he was achieving that speed by shaving precious seconds off absolutely everything he could.

 

“We could try for 2.15,” Zechs offered hopefully. “A few more days, and we might get that down consistently. It’s a full half-minute faster,” he pointed out unnecessarily. Treize was more than capable of doing that bit of basic arithmetic for himself.

 

“Two minutes,” Treize replied stubbornly. There was a frown settling between his eyebrows. “I won’t accept anything less, so keep drilling.”

 

“Sir, we’ve been drilling nothing else for ten days, now,” the younger man protested. “The pilots are running the pre-flights in their sleep!”

 

“Good. That’s the idea.” Treize tilted his head to one side and smiled slightly. “Can you do it?” he asked.

 

Zechs blinked. “Can I do what?”

 

“Scramble your suit in less than two minutes?” Treize clarified. He reached out to one side as he spoke, his fingers closing on his coffee cup through memory of its location rather than by looking for it.

 

The younger man hesitated for a moment, then nodded a little unwillingly. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

 

“In the Leo?” Treize pressed.

 

“Yes, sir,” Zechs confirmed.

 

“And in the Aries?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“So can I,” Treize concluded. “And if we can, then so can the other pilots. Two minutes, Zechs. Not a second more.”

 

The Commander pushed to his feet, draining his coffee mug as he moved, and began to step towards the open door. “Coffee?” he offered.

 

“Yes, please,” Zechs answered gratefully. He’d dried his hair but that did nothing for the soggy state of his clothing. Despite the warmth of Treize’s rooms, he was starting to feel chilled in his damp uniform and, if Treize was going to argue every little detail in the report like this, then Zechs knew he might be in for quite a wait before he could to get changed.

 

He followed the older man back into the main room and leaned against the breakfast bar Treize had set his coffee machine up on. “Treize, it isn’t the pilots,” he said, continuing their conversation. “Individually, every single one of us can scramble any suit in the two minutes. The problem is that we’re trying to do that and work with unfamiliar hangers, unfamiliar wingmen, and unfamiliar formations. It’s still jolting to look at the viewers and see a different type of suit by your side. It’s making people hesitate.”

 

Treize poured coffee from the pot sitting on the hotplate into his own mug, then bent and reached into a cupboard for a clean mug for Zechs. “What’s the solution?” he asked, filling the new cup as well and passing it over the younger man.

 

“Thanks,” Zechs said. “Time, I think,” he answered honestly. “Just time. We’ll adjust. It just needs a little work. Leave it with me,” he said tiredly, conceding defeat on the topic for the fourth night in a row and wondering if he shouldn’t hand his report to Une tomorrow and spare himself another go around.

 

Treize smiled, the look in his eyes suggesting that he had a very good idea of what Zechs was thinking. “Excellent. Thank you, Lieutenant.” He moved past the younger man into the main area again, leaving Zechs to wonder what he was doing. Treize had added neither cream nor sugar to either of their mugs and whilst Zechs could and often did drink his coffee just as it came, Treize definitely didn’t.

 

He had his answer a moment later, when the older pilot opened another cupboard and produced a small bottle of something. He put his coffee mug down on a coaster, unscrewed the top of the bottle, and poured what was more or less a single measure into the cup.

 

The smell of the alcohol infused coffee flooded the room almost immediately, making Zechs tilt his head as he read the label for confirmation. “Medovaya, Treize?” he asked curiously. The honey infused vodka was expensive, manufactured by only one small distillery in Russia, and even Treize didn’t drink it lightly. In fact, about the only time he drank it was in coffee, which was also why it wasn’t in his freezer with the standard stuff.

 

Treize made a small humming noise of agreement, and then held the pretty, little bottle out. “Here,” he offered.

 

Zechs took the small bottle, watching as Treize took a first sip of his doctored coffee and smiled with pleasure before pouring about half of what Treize had into his own mug.

 

He let it settle for a moment, then drank. “Who were you talking to?” he asked, when he’d swallowed. Treize was pacing around the room slowly, aimlessly, sipping his drink and fairly radiating what Zechs could only term as excitement. The pieces, the blond was realising, were coming together into a very pleasing picture. If Treize had been talking to whom Zechs thought he had, and given his mood and the choice of drink….

 

“Leia,” Treize answered him, turning to face the younger man and smiling again. He didn’t question how Zechs knew he’d been talking to anyone at all – more proof that he was in an exceptional mood – and his expression as he said his wife’s name was glowing.

 

“Oh?” Zechs continued. “A little unusual for her to be calling you, isn’t it?” he wondered. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” he added, hoping the concern that was competing with the growing delight in his mind wasn’t justified. There really weren’t many reasons Leia would have called, and not many at all that would have left Treize this utterly happy.

 

In fact, if he were honest, Zechs could only think of one.

 

Treize shook his head immediately. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong. Just Leia wanting to exchange gossip, see if either of us knew anything interesting.”

 

Zechs tilted his head to one side, realising that, if he was right, Treize hadn’t quite processed it yet. “And did she?” he asked, playing along.

 

Treize shrugged eloquently, dropping his gaze to the contents of his cup for a moment, before looking back up at Zechs with a glowing smile. “How terribly obvious am I being?” he asked lightly.

 

Zechs returned the grin instantly. “Relatively,” he answered.

 

“I never was any good at keeping a secret,” the older man grumbled cheerfully, and with a rueful quirk of his expression.

 

 The younger man let his face show his opinion of that little comment but he didn’t voice the thought. Instead, he took a couple of paces towards his friend and set his cup down on the top of the cupboard Treize had collected the bottle from. “Keeping what secret?” he replied. “Has Marie suddenly decided to start speaking fluent Swahili or something?” he quizzed, teasing now.

 

Treize blinked in surprise for a moment, then laughed affectionately. “Brat,” he chided softly. “That’s hardly likely, is it?” He paused for a moment, then raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t worked it out?” he asked curiously.

 

Zechs nodded. “Oh, I have,” he admitted readily. “I’m just giving you the chance to actually tell me,” he explained. “I thought you might like to.”

 

“Ah.” Treize’s expression was so perfectly, blissfully happy that Zechs could feel his own mood lifting, his heart rate picking up in anticipation of what the man was going to say.

 

“And?” Zechs nudged when Treize didn’t look like he was going to speak again.

 

Treize put his own cup down to reach across the space between them to his friend, offering his hands in a gesture he hadn’t made since Zechs had been small enough for Treize to pick up and carry. “Leia’s pregnant,” he murmured, almost not saying it aloud, as thought he didn’t trust the fact not to slip away once it was out in the open

 

Zechs caught Treize’s fingers in his own hands lightly, studying the older man closely. “Pozdravlyayu,” he said carefully, knowing his Russian pronunciation was mediocre at best. “Congratulations!”

 

Treize’s reply was lit with joy. “Spasiba,” he replied, his voice soft and throaty in his native language. His hands gripped harder, letting Zechs feel the strength in his fingers, the slight calluses of a pilot and the smooth hardness of Treize’s wedding ring.

 

“Congratulations,” Zechs said again, then gave a gentle tug with his hands and pulled Treize forward the half step he needed to be able to hug him properly.

 

Treize settled against him, warm through his uniform and breathing just a shade too rapidly, returning Zechs’s hold willingly and too happy to remember that this sort of physical contact should be awkward between them.

 

A few breaths later, he disengaged himself from the younger man gently and went to stand by the narrow window, looking out on the base with unfocused eyes and one hand pressed lightly to the toughened glass.

 

The other hand he brushed across his collarbone, stilling an inch above the faint outline of his dog tags and gripping. As Zechs closed the space between them, wondering if the older man was feeling all right, Treize began to murmur something in Russian, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

 

The words were low and lyrical below his breath, and so quietly spoken that Zechs only heard vague snippets of them at first, snatched that became clearer as he moved into touching distance again. It took a moment or two to dawn on him that the older man was reciting softly voiced prayer and, when it did, the realisation made him pause and catch his breath to listen more closely.

 

Zechs’s ability to understand Russian was better by far than his ability to actually speak it, and he had little trouble translating what his friend was saying, finding himself surprised by the free-flowing, effortless litany.

 

“God of all blessings,” Treize murmured, “giver of all grace, I thank you for the breath that sustains my life. I thank you for the mystery of creation, for the beauty that the eye can see and the joy that the ear may hear. For the unknown that I cannot behold which fills the universe with wonder and for the expanse of space that draws me beyond the definition of self.

 

“I thank you for the family who nurture my becoming,” he continued, and Zechs found himself biting his lip a little at the older man’s next words. “For the friends who love me by choice and for my child, who lightens the difficult moments with delight. Most of all, this day, I thank you for the unborn, who offers me hope for the future.”  
  
Treize’s voice softened even further, so that Zechs had to bend his head to hear him, resting one hand on the other man’s shoulder without thinking. “I thank you for your grace, for each experience of your presence, however it may manifest. I trust in you for all things and know that I am never alone whilst I hold you near.”

 

Instead of the closing ‘Amen’ Zechs was expecting, and which he found himself almost about to join in with, Treize kept murmuring, demonstrating a depth and a reality to his faith that Zechs had never dreamed was a part of his friend.

 

As he listened, the younger man found his eyes had closed, and he drifted in the sound of Treize’s voice, revelling in the contact between them and the sudden sense of contentment he was feeling.

 


	13. Chapter 13

_Mid July AC 191_   
_Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base_

 

 

“All right, what’s going on?” Otto demanded, cornering Zechs with a hand on his elbow as he stepped out of the locker room showers a few days later. “You’ve been walking around like the cat that got the cream for the last week and Commander Treize keeps smiling at people.”

 

Zechs, momentarily disconcerted at being accosted in such a fashion whilst not wearing more than a towel, relaxed when he saw it was his former roommate. “Jesus, Otto!” he swore. “Are you trying to give me heart failure?”

 

Otto grinned wickedly. “Well, somebody’s got to kick your pulse up a notch occasionally, gorgeous, and I haven’t seen enough of you lately to do it the nice way. Are you hiding from me?” he asked teasingly.

 

“Of course not!” Zechs protested. “I’ve just been stupidly busy, that’s all.” He shook Otto’s grip off his arm and bent to start drying himself. “We’ve got rumours flying at us from half-way around the world about possible attacks in the next couple of days,” he explained, aware even as he said it that it was information that Otto shouldn’t really be hearing. “Treize thinks we’ll be seeing our first active deployments before the end of the week.”

 

Otto’s lovely eyes widened. “What, for real?” he asked. He shook his head. “I don’t know whether to feel excited or scared out of my mind,” he said quietly. “Any idea what and what numbers?” he asked.

 

Zechs also shook his head. “Not a clue, and I’d suggest a little of both. It’s what I’ve been working on lately.”

 

It was the truth, as far as it went. The first reports had hit Treize’s desk not three hours after he’d told Zechs of his wife’s pregnancy and they’d been coming in thick and fast ever since. Treize had broken the news to his Staff officers only that morning that he was expecting their first deployment in the next few days but he’d told Zechs that General Catalonia was itching to test his new Wing as soon as he’d done reading that first report.

 

Zechs had felt his heart leap into his mouth at the words, surprising himself with how anxious he was, and he’d been alternating between that frantic nerviness and his overwhelming delight at Leia’s pregnancy ever since.

 

“Is that what’s had you hogging the simulators then?” Otto asked, one eyebrow lifted curiously as he commented on the fact that Zechs had been spending a lot of his free time in the past few days in the training suites, running drills for himself. “I was wondering. I was putting it down to frustration, hon,” he added slyly.

 

Zechs felt himself colour a little as he reached into his locker and pulled his clothes free. “Otto!” he protested, scandalised. Neither of them had made any effort to keep their preferences, or their friendship, a secret from the rest of the Wing but still, there were limits. The locker rooms were definitely not the best place for Otto to be flirting with him!

 

“What?” Otto asked, with an unrepentant grin. “You certainly haven’t been fucking me lately,” he said brazenly. “So unless there’s something I don’t know, love…?”

 

Zechs just about choked. “Oh, my God, Otto, will you shut up?” he spluttered. “You cannot say things like that!”

 

Otto smirked. “Why not?” he asked cheekily, then shrugged as he let his expression soften into apology. “Sorry, sweetie. I’ll stop,” he promised, having succeeded in making Zechs’s blush deepen to a near match for his coat. “So, the simulators…?” he nudged.

 

The blond boy shook his head in disgust as he pulled his undershirt over it and glared at his friend. “What about them?” he asked. “I’ve spent so long whipping my Squadron into shape that I was forgetting what a cockpit felt like. I didn’t think that was a good thing from what Treize has been saying so I corrected the problem.” He picked up his heavy jacket and began shrugging into it.

 

“Is that what you’re calling it, gorgeous,” Otto said dryly, reaching out automatically to help his friend. “Right.”

 

Zechs paused in buttoning his jacket to cast the other boy a puzzled look. “What should I be calling it, then?” he asked. “They’re only simulator runs.”

 

“Sure,” Otto agreed mildly. “But have you bothered looking at the times you’ve been making?” He tilted his head. “The rest of us are coming off like first year cadets in comparison, beautiful. The vets in my unit are saying they’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”

 

“I’m quick,” Zechs replied evenly. “I’ve always been quick. What of it?” he asked. “I’m not doing anything I wasn’t at the Academy,” he said, and there was a thread of uncertainty in his voice that betrayed the confident phrasing.

 

Otto softened immediately, reaching out to put one hand on Zechs’s red-clad arm as the other boy finished tugging his uniform into place on his body and reached for his darkened glasses. “You never scored like this at the Academy,” he replied softly. “Honestly. There’s quick and there’s quick. Noin wouldn’t know what had hit her now.”

 

Zechs frowned slowly. “It can’t be that different, Otto,” he protested. “It’s only been two months.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Admittedly, your Squadron Leader showed me a few tricks a couple of weeks ago,” he explained slowly, “but they aren’t anything major. They shouldn’t be causing that much improvement.”

 

He closed his locker door with a metallic clank and picked up his towel to take it with him back to his rooms, beckoning Otto with him as he began to move towards the door.

 

Otto fell into step willingly, standing close enough that he was brushing along Zechs’s arm and hip as they moved. “Well, something is, love,” he replied. “Maybe he showed you more than you thought he had,” he suggested.

 

Zechs shrugged, wondering about it himself now. The impromptu lesson had been delivered at four in the morning, out of uniform and entirely off the record. Only the fact that it had been Treize who’d ordered him to report to the training suites had kept Zechs from turning on his heel and walking away from the older man, especially when his first words had been, “Bonjour, baby bird. Welcome to the last flying lesson you’ll ever need!”

 

Jean-Remy St Cyr Chennault, Treize’s second in command and Otto’s Squadron leader, was an anomaly in the Specials. He was an officer who wasn’t an aristocrat, a man whose military rank was his only title. Rarer still, he was a colonial – and not in the sense of being from space. He was American, Louisiana-born – as he’d stressed to Zechs the moment they were introduced – and his New World pedigree counted for less than nothing in the Euro-centric halls of the Alliance.

 

Making him stand out even more was his Cajun heritage, an ancestry that showed through in every word he spoke. His accent was thicker than swamp mud and he talked perpetually in a bastard Anglo-French patois that was never entirely comprehensible. Un-translated, his greeting to Zechs had been more truly, “Bonjou’, Beby Bir’. W’lcom’ t’ de las’ flyin’ l’sson yeh’ll eva nee’!” than anything close to correct English.

 

His appearance was as unconventional as his speech. Hair so dark a brown as to be almost black was kept slicked back into a velvet ribbon that always looked in danger of slipping and a neatly trimmed moustache hid the worst of a narrow scar bisecting his top lip. His customised uniform coat of heavy white wool and bright green facings stood out – if such a thing was possible – even more than Zechs’s own vivid scarlet did.

 

In spite of all that – or perhaps because of it – he was an undoubtedly attractive man, something Zechs and Otto had both noted fairly quickly. His hawkish gold eyes, trim, lanky figure and warm honey skin were matched with a certain insouciant charm that made people smile at him whether they willed it or not.

 

No amount of charm, though, would have seen him ranked Captain if he hadn’t also been damned talented in the field. At twenty-six, Captain Chennault was a multiple ace in multiple suits and the Specials uncontested top pilot by a margin that was close to embarrassing, absolute, unprecedented genius behind the controls.

 

Or so Treize had said to Zechs when ordering him to attend his little refresher class. Remy himself – as he’d insisted Zechs call him – had laughed at this portrayal whilst he was flipping switches in the simulated cockpit and given a rather different description.

 

“My granddaddy was a pilot,” Zechs quoted the man softly now. “My great-granddaddy was a pirate and my grandmother’s from time out of mind have been witch queens. I’m a southern gentleman with the Mississippi in my blood and a feel for flying.”

 

Next to him, Otto chuckled softly. “Are you now?” he said impishly. “I wouldn’t have taken you for American,” he teased.

 

"I was quoting your Squadron Leader," Zechs replied archly, knocking his arm into his friend’s as they stepped out of the locker room and into the warm, damp evening. "It's what he said to me when he was drilling me the other day."

 

"Ah," Otto said, as understanding dawned. "That makes more sense." He chuckled softly. "Have you ever heard anything like that accent before?" he asked impishly, referencing his commander’s unique way of speaking.

 

Zechs shook his head, smiling unwillingly. "Definitely not," he admitted. "Half French and half English and half nonsense as far as I can tell." He paused contemplatively. "He's a good pilot, though," he allowed.

 

"Bloody good, actually," Otto enthused. "He was showing us this little evasive jink he does in training the other day and I couldn't even see how he did it, much less start duplicating it."

 

"I've seen it," Zechs said, and forbore from mentioning that he'd had no trouble duplicating it at all. That he was a better pilot than his friend was fact but Zechs saw no need to rub in just how much better. "It's probably just practice," he offered supportively.

 

Otto shrugged good-naturedly. "Maybe but I think there's more to it than that. Have you seen him play his little harmonica thing yet?" he continued. "He has very deft hands.”

 

Zechs shook his head. "Not yet," he answered honestly, following Otto’s train of thought without effort – that strong, agile hands made for a pilot who could play his controls with more finesse, and so made for a better pilot.

 

A moment later, the blond canted his friend a speculative look, his smile becoming a wicked little smirk as he read the other boy’s body language and picked up on the other reason Otto had made the comment. "Oh, for God’s sake,” he sighed indulgently. “Try not to fuck your Squadron Leader, hmm?" he suggested mildly.

 

Otto flushed a little, caught off-guard, but he returned Zechs’s smirk like for like. "Any reason why not?" he asked cheerfully.

 

"You mean, aside from the fact that he's straight?" Zechs shook his head, shrugging expressively. "It's probably bad luck to nail your commanding officer,” he said, “and it's definitely bad for your career."

 

Otto laughed affectionately. “ _Bad_ for my career?” he wondered, scandalised by the suggestion. “Oh, I don’t think it would be, beautiful. Not unless you’ve been taking a lot of acting classes,” he tweaked. He tilted his head, making chocolate curls shift in the dying evening light. “As for straight…” Otto continued. “Even if he is – and I highly, highly doubt it, gorgeous – the only difference between a straight man and a gay one is five shots of spirits!”

 

Zechs cringed. “Otto!” he protested. Comments like that belonged to a side of his friend that he didn’t like very much.

 

A moment later, he shook his head again, this time in negation rather than simple expression. “I really wouldn’t make a play for him,” he advised quietly. “I overheard him talking to Treize about women, so he’s at least bi, and he is your Squadron Lead. Fraternisation with a senior officer is a serious breach of regs.”

 

“I can live with bi,” Otto said quietly, shrugging casually. “Especially when it’s as hot as Jean-Remy Chennault. But if you’re worried, I’ll leave be.”

 

Otto took a longer step or two, moving to push open the door the two boys were approaching and hold it for his friend. “He’d probably be a better match for you than me anyway,” he suggested softly. “That Ice Prince chill you’ve been cultivating lately could do with a little spice to balance it.”

 

Zechs turned his head to glare meaningfully. “I’m not ‘cultivating’ anything,” he replied shortly. “And I’ve told you not to call me that.”

 

The smaller pilot let go of the door, falling back into step as Zechs led them down the central corridor of the Staff Officer’s quarters. “Why not?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “It suits you. There’s always been something very regal about you when you’re in a huff and the way you’ve been talking to some of your Squadron these last few days could freeze outer space.”

 

Zechs shrugged tightly. “If they will insist on acting like idiots,” he said, and left the rest of the sentence to Otto’s imagination.

 

“It’s got to be better than ‘baby bird’,” Otto offered, eyebrows raised speculatively.

 

Zechs shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.” He opened the door to his rooms and walked through it, leaving his former roommate to follow him, or not, as suited him. “Stop, Otto. Please?” he asked softly. “I have reason not to find it funny, don’t you think?”

 

There really was only one reply Otto could make to that and he did it whilst giving a long, loud and entirely internal groan, realising too late what he’d forgotten about his friend. “Okay,” he answered quietly, then, “I’m sorry.”

 

Zechs waved it away with one gloved hand and moved to toss his towel into his laundry basket.

 

The move reminded him of Treize a few nights earlier and he smiled again as the recollection warmed him with thoughts of his soon-to-be Godson or daughter and the wonderfully, glowingly happy energy Treize had been radiating since. It wasn’t a surprise that Otto had picked up on something being not quite right. He had cause to know Treize a little better than most and would have been one of the first to notice that there was something overriding his usual calm control.

 

The smile, the shift in his body language must have tipped Otto off, because he crossed the little room in a couple of rangy strides to stand next to his friend.

 

“And we’re back to the point I started this conversation on,” Otto said as he drew close. “What on Earth is going on that’s got you smiling like that?”

 

Zechs consciously set aside the dark thoughts that were bubbling in the back of his mind and focused on happier things. “Just family stuff,” he said lightly.

 

Otto canted his head and raised a speculative eyebrow. “Oh?” he asked, matching Zechs’s tone. “Has Treize suddenly decided to declare his undying love?” he teased.

 

“Oh, hardly likely.” Zechs rolled his eyes. “No, it’s Leia.”

 

“What about her?” Otto asked.

 

For a moment, Zechs considered whether he should be sharing the information with Otto – Treize was peculiarly secretive about his marriage – but then he reminded himself that Otto was in a unique position as far as such things were concerned. He was the closest thing Zechs had to a significant other at the current time and was on personally friendly terms with both Treize and Leia besides. He couldn’t imagine that Treize would especially mind Otto knowing the truth – he might even be happy to have someone else to share it with, given that he was cut off from Larkspur and Valadin and could hardly confide in Lady Une.

 

“She’s pregnant,” Zechs told the smaller pilot and Otto’s handsome face suddenly lit up with delight, his warm, velvety eyes dancing with pleasure.

 

“That’s fantastic news,” Otto said. “No wonder the Commander’s been bouncing about the place.”

 

Zechs laughed softly. “You have no idea,” he confessed. “He’s been restraining himself in public, believe me.”

 

“I can imagine,” Otto said, who wouldn’t have been able to do any such thing if he hadn’t once seen Treize play fight with Zechs, and win by dumping the blond on his arse on the floor. “Well, now,” he carried on, “this calls for a celebration. What are we going to do?” he asked, and suddenly, almost between words, his voice dropped and darkened, becoming smoky and suggestive.

 

Zechs felt his body tighten in response, reminding him that it had been more than a fortnight since anyone other than himself had laid a hand on him.

 

In truth, the new posting and the new rooming arrangements had impinged on his relationship with Otto more than Zechs had ever thought they would. They couldn’t simply stumble the five feet between their beds as they had at the Academy whenever one of them felt the urge – Zechs’s rooms were on the far side of the base to the pilot’s bunks and Otto shared his sleeping space with two other officers from his Squadron. It made things difficult.

 

Nor was there anything much in the way of a social community on the base yet. There had been one or two get-togethers, including Treize’s, but nothing serious. Zechs hadn’t needed the stories of the seasoned hands to tell him that wouldn’t change until the Wing was blooded. It meant, for the moment, that there was little opportunity to duplicate the nightlife he and Otto had enjoyed at the Academy and that meant that, at this point, Zechs wasn’t even sure which of the hundred or so pilots on base shared his gender preferences, much less which ones might be amenable to a mutually enjoyable encounter or two.

 

Maybe Otto had been right, after all. Maybe Zechs had been throwing himself into his work because he was frustrated.

 

Fortunate that there seemed to be a solution at hand, then.

 

Raising one eyebrow slowly, Zechs let himself smile in a fashion he knew Otto had a weakness for. “I have no idea,” he replied, matching his voice to his friend’s. “Any suggestions, Officer?” he asked silkily.

 

Otto grinned at him, his smile that of a fallen angel. “Oh, always, sir,” he replied.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the reason for the rating.... :-)

_Mid July AC 191_   
_Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base_

 

“Oh, God, that feels good.”

 

Zechs let his back arch as shivers of pleasure tickled his skin and made his voice a lazy sigh, stretching against the pull of his own muscles and thoroughly enjoying the momentary feeling of the strain. From somewhere above him, Otto chuckled affectionately at him, his hands buried in the silky mass of Zechs’s decidedly tumbled hair.

 

“You relaxed yet?” the smaller boy asked brightly, and Zechs gave him a somewhat lopsided smile for an answer.

 

“Getting there,” he said honestly, shifting long limbs again just for the sake of it.

 

The blond was sprawled full length on his bed, wrapped rather haphazardly in sheets that were crumpled and warm and a little damp from the varying amounts of effort the two pilots had put in over the past few hours. Otto, in contrast, was sitting curled up on Zechs’s pillows, legs crossed as though he were meditating and his friend’s head resting in his lap as he played with the cool swathes of silvery mane spilled across his hands.

 

“Ah, good,” Otto replied, and chuckled again when Zechs stuck his tongue out in a gesture he should long have outgrown.

 

A moment later, the blond rolled where he was lying, resettling himself on his belly, with his head chin down on his hands against Otto’s knee. It was an inviting position, and not the first time Zechs had been in it that night, but it made Otto stop his petting of his friend long enough to poke a fingertip into the back of Zechs’s shoulder.

 

“No, don’t fall asleep on me, beautiful,” he ordered quietly. “I want you relaxed, not soporific.”

 

Zechs made some sort of incomprehensible sound that might have been laughter from under his hair and shifted enough to kiss the patch of skin nearest to him lightly. “I’m not falling asleep, I promise.”

 

He wriggled enough to free his right hand from under his head and held it out imperiously. “Drink, please,” he instructed, and Otto complied immediately, scooping a heavy bottomed tumbler out from the assorted detritus on Zechs’s nightstand to pass it to the other man.

 

In the process, the side of his hand clipped part of the morass and threatened to send it scattering across the carpet. Otto saved the situation, showing the hand-eye co-ordination of a pilot as he caught the box of condoms, the open bottle of lube and the little glass vial of Liquid Gold that was, fortunately, still sealed tight.

 

“Oops,” he commented with a giggle. “That was close. You’d have had fun explaining that to Treize if we’d spilled the poppers.”

 

Zechs sipped the potent contents of the glass and grimaced ruefully. “I’d have had fun coming up with reasons why he couldn’t come in here for a week and why my window absolutely had to be open, you mean,” he replied. “You’ve had one too many sips of this Absinthe if you think for one moment I’d have told him the truth. He’d scream at me for a month for even owning the stuff – and I’m not about to explain to him why I do.”

 

“Probably not wise,” Otto agreed. “Talk of muscle relaxants and gay sex might be more than he wants to hear,” he said, and promptly let the topic drop altogether.

 

Being careful to put it a little further back from the edge than it had been originally, Otto slid the glass vial back onto the nightstand. He jumped a little when Zechs dropped another, still fleeting kiss against the bare skin of his thigh, noticeably higher up.

 

“What are you up to?” Otto asked curiously.

 

“Nothing,” Zechs replied, and he was being honest. He sat up a little to finish the milky green liquid in the tumbler and then shifted enough that Otto could slide down next to him in the nest they’d made of the blankets.

 

The dark-haired boy complied, bringing the condoms and the lube with him in one hand, taking the empty glass and setting it down by the bed.

 

“Here,” Otto said, offering out the brightly coloured box. “It’s about time you played with these,” he commented.

 

Zechs, who had rolled onto his side when Otto stretched out next to him and propped himself up on one elbow, held out his free hand and took the box with a little smile. “When have I had the chance?” he asked lightly. He shifted one foot forward, wriggling until his toes could stroke the inside of Otto’s ankle. “I do appreciate it, though.”

 

Otto laughed warmly. “No need to get mushy, love,” he chuckled. “It’s hardly the greatest present in the world.”

 

It wasn’t, but it had still been a sign of how well Otto knew him. The dark haired boy had presented him with the small, ornately wrapped gift a few weeks earlier, laughingly calling it a house warming present for his new room. Zechs, curiosity peaked, had opened the shiny paper and ribbons, and promptly dissolved into fits of giggles that had seen tears coming to his eyes before he was done.

 

Otto, in his wisdom, had gone shopping in the three weeks he’d spent with his family in Germany and bought his erstwhile lover a box of very exclusive, very expensive condoms. They were the closest thing on the market to not using them at all, and Otto had made it clear what they were intended for by selecting a set in a range of flavours.

 

One fingertip stealing out to trace faintly golden skin, the dark haired pilot shifted a little closer to his friend but left space for the box between them. “It’s only to my benefit to indulge your oral fixation,” he said softly, his eyes dancing merrily in the dim lighting.

 

Zechs nodded an agreement but protested verbally. “That logic’s flawed,” he pointed out. “I don’t need them with you,” he reminded.

 

Otto rolled his eyes. “No, but forgive me for encouraging you to practice on others, hon,” he teased. “Practice makes perfect, after all!”

 

“Hey!” The blond boy pulled back a little, his face a perfect mask of outrage. “What are you trying to say?” he demanded, scandalised.

 

Otto’s expression was sweetly, falsely, beatific. “Not a thing, gorgeous,” he said innocently and then he yelped as Zechs reached across the gap and swatted him hard on one hip, making the skin redden and sting.

 

“Ouch!” Otto grumbled, rubbing the spot, before blinking inquisitively. “Since when have you had a kinky side?”

 

Zechs raised a knowing eyebrow as his only response, before letting himself collapse onto his back and stretching against the mattress again. There was still a pleasant ache in his muscles that spoke of the exertions he’d put in earlier, and a peculiar, still languor in his mind that he’d learned only came with really good sex.

 

He reached his hands over his head, wrists crossing as he wrapped his fingers around one another and brushed the cold plaster of the wall with the back of one hand. As he began to settle back into himself, warm fingers caught at his wrists and held him in place as Otto leaned over him, smirking.

 

“Got you,” he murmured softly and Zechs let his eyes flutter shut as sharp, smooth teeth nibbled at his jaw line lightly. Silky soft curls tickled at the delicate skin of his throat, and the sudden weight of Otto against him, the heat of a hand against his waist and the intrusion of a knee between his own, made Zechs shudder with renewed wanting.

 

“So you have,” Zechs replied, his voice a little breathless. “And I’d ask what you were going to do with me but I rather think I know.”

 

Otto huffed a laugh. “You think so?” he taunted mildly.

 

“Hmm.” Zechs wriggled, shifting his body against the other boy’s. “I suspect. You’ve not been getting me to relax for the last hour for no reason.” He tugged at the grip on his wrists carefully. “If that’s what you wanted, you might just have told me,” he said, and there was something slightly chiding to his tone.

 

Otto shrugged, letting his hold go as Zechs was hinting and not minding in the least as it freed his hand for other uses. “You take coaxing, sweetie,” he answered honestly.

 

“Yes,” Zechs admitted. “But not for you.”

 

Chocolate curls lifted as Otto tipped his head to meet Zechs’s eyes with his own. “Oh?”

 

Zechs merely shrugged in reply, the gesture both effortless and meaningful, and Otto took it as the consent it was as he pulled away from his friend to give them the room they needed to arrange themselves without risking clumsiness-caused bruising.

 

As Zechs shifted pillows and resettled long limbs, Otto sat back on his heels and picked up the abandoned box of condoms, dropping it into the middle of his friend’s chest with a wicked little grin. “Here,” he said, much as he had the first time he’d handed it over. “Your present, you choose.”

 

Zechs smiled back but he didn’t immediately move. Otto was offering to continue a habit the blond had been hoping to abandon long before now.

 

Various experiments over the time they’d been lovers had taught the two pilots that Zechs couldn’t easily yield to his body being breached. Even when he was completely willing for it, it took noticeably more effort to get him to loosen up sufficiently than it did with Otto – a tendency that had caused Otto no end of worry when Zechs first asked his friend to top him.

 

The dark-haired boy had been so anxious, in fact, that it had taken Zechs almost two months of them truly sleeping together to convince Otto to make love to him. No matter how much the blond tried to persuade him, Otto had been too scared of hurting his friend to give in until, from somewhere, he’d picked up several pointers on how to make things easier for a virgin partner.

 

Beyond judicious use of the Liquid Gold, one of the most useful of those pointers had been to use a sheath for the sake of comfort rather than safety, letting the smooth synthetic material the condom was made from work with the lube being applied to cut friction dramatically.

 

Otto had experimented alone, learned that it worked and brought the idea into play with Zechs, grinning with relief and delight the entire time.

 

Initially, Zechs had more than appreciated it, but not anymore. For the same reasons he didn’t use condoms when he took Otto in his mouth, the blond disliked their continued use in their lovemaking. He resented anything that deprived him of any aspect of his partner – be it their taste, their smell or the true feel of them inside him – and whilst a sense of self-preservation could override that resentment during his dalliances in the clubs, Zechs trusted Otto enough that safety wasn’t a factor and valued their encounters precisely because they could be completely uninhibited.

 

As Otto reached out his hand again, fingers snaring the little bottle neatly, Zechs shook his head. “What if I don’t want to choose?” he asked quietly.

 

The dark-haired pilot stilled in place, looking at his friend with worried eyes. “What?” he asked blankly before he understood and his expression shifted. “Beautiful, we’ve gone over this. I don’t think…” he began and Zechs stopped him with a touch.

 

“Please?” Zechs begged softly. “I know you’re worried,” he said, voice heavy with something Otto couldn’t, quite, put a name to, “but there’s no need to be. You aren’t going to hurt me,” he promised.

 

Otto hesitated, then shook his head slowly. “That’s easy said, angel,” he replied, “but you don’t know….”

 

“Because you won’t let me,” Zechs jumped in. He sat up, his touch firming into a proper hold on his friend’s arm. “Please, Otto,” he said again, pleading. “Do you not get that I want you?”

 

The open admission made Otto shiver, and his fingers tightened on the bottle he was holding as he repressed the reaction. “Zechs, sweetie,” he warned and didn’t get to finish.

 

Zechs leaned forward to put his lips to his friend’s ear, suddenly shifting his body as he moved to close the space between the two of them. He ended up with one knee on either side of Otto’s hips, hands buried in his dark curls and his breath hot against the sensitive skin of Otto’s throat as he talked. “I want you,” he murmured again. “I want to feel you – just you – inside me properly.”

 

Otto shivered again, fingers finding a grip on Zechs’s narrow waist and holding him closer instinctively. “I know,” he admitted breathlessly, “but….”

 

“But, what?” Zechs asked. “I want you inside me,” he pressed. “Just you, not some of you, or you-but-not-really, you, so I can feel you moving, skin on skin. I want to feel it when you come, all warm and wet.” He laughed softly. “I’ve fantasised about it,” he admitted huskily, “when I’ve been on my own, thought about having you spill yourself inside me, and it gets me hard every single ti….”

 

Otto shifted restlessly and Zechs was suddenly forced to break off his confession as Otto’s hand across his mouth physically shut him up for a moment. He gave a muffled squeak of protest but lapsed into silence, smiling with the certain knowledge that he was getting to his friend. He could feel the way the smaller boy was tensing under him, feel the weight of the erection against his hip that hadn’t been there a moment before.

 

“Bloody hell, gorgeous,” Otto managed nervously, dropping his hand “When did you learn to go on like that?” he asked. He forced a shaky little laugh before Zechs could answer him. “You sound like you’re reciting kinky poetry,” he tried, trying to defuse the tension Zechs had built with humour.

 

It would have worked, except that Otto seemed to have forgotten what Zechs had studied in his spare time at the Academy. The blond tilted his head with a wicked glint in his blue eyes and bit his lip to hide a triumphant smirk. “Kinky poetry, hmm?” he asked lightly. “Okay.”

 

He slid one hand from Otto’s hair and trailed it slowly down his spine, tracing lithe muscle and smooth skin as he began to talk, rocking his body in little shifts against his friend’s. “E.E. Cummings for you,” he began, voice gone smoky. “Pre-colony Poet. ‘I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite a new thing. Muscles better and nerves more. I like your body,’” he recited intently. “‘I like what it does, I like its how’s. I like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling-firm-smoothness, which I will again and again and again kiss.’”

 

It wasn’t a perfect recitation – Zechs had tweaked the exact wording on the fly to make it better fit its purpose – but it seemed to have done the trick because as the blond paused to draw breath, Otto shook his head, wide eyed.

 

“‘I like kissing this and that of you….’” Zechs carried on, matching deed to word as he dropped light pecks across Otto’s shoulders. “‘I like slowly stroking the shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and the what-is-it that comes over parting flesh. And possibly I like the thrill of, under me, you, quite so new.’”

 

Otto moaned softly. “Stop talking,” he demanded roughly, his breath coming in pants as though he’d been running. “Jesus Christ,” he groaned. “Only you, angel, would use bloody poetry as foreplay!”

 

Zechs shrugged unrepentantly. “Did it work?” he wondered honestly.

 

Otto stared blankly. “Did it…?” he half repeated. “You tell me,” he ordered. “Come here!”

 

Zechs squeaked again as Otto used the grip he’d kept on the blonde’s waist to tip him over backwards into the pillows and began to laugh until his friend shut him up again, this time with a kiss.

 

 

******************

 

 

“So, poetry gets you hot,” Otto commented lazily, sometime later. He was collapsed on his back amongst sheets that were now even more crushed and stained than they had been before, letting his skin cool off and his body settle.

 

One of his arms was tucked behind his head, being used as an impromptu substitute for the pillows they’d either scattered across the room or rendered fit only for the wash basket. The other was wrapped loosely around Zechs’s shoulders, soothing the blond through the come down from their lovemaking, agile fingers tracing meaningless patterns on smooth golden skin that occasionally made Zechs sigh and shift in lethargic enjoyment.

 

Zechs hadn’t really moved at all from where he’d been when they’d finished, save to tilt his upper body enough to let Otto have his lazy embrace, but he lifted his head as the smaller pilot spoke and looked at him through half open eyes.

 

“Poetry gets _me_ hot?” he asked doubtingly, dropping back down bonelessly. “I wasn’t the one in danger of waking the dead a few minutes ago,” he pointed out mildly.

 

Otto snorted. “Don’t kid yourself, beautiful. You weren’t exactly quiet there.” He shrugged, then stretched contentedly. “Something must have set you off.”

 

“And it doesn’t occur to you that maybe that had more to do with you fucking me through the mattress than the dubious writing ability of a dead poet?” Zechs asked archly. He shook his head. “Right.”

 

Otto chuckled affectionately. “Point taken,” he admitted. “Still, I didn’t know you could recite poetry like that off the top of your head – especially not that sort of poetry.”

 

“A literature degree has its uses,” the blond said sleepily. He rolled onto his side, seeking the other man’s body heat. “And I like poetry. I always have.”

 

Otto shifted his arm so Zechs could curl into him, smiling indulgently at him even though the blond couldn’t see it. They’d been playing for several hours – as the sheets could attest by their condition – but Otto rather thought they were done for the night. Zechs relaxed could usually be interested in another go-round but Zechs this far gone was generally a lost cause.

 

It was no bad thing anyway. It was unlikely they’d be able to match the intensity of the last little while and it had to be the early hours of the morning by now. Some sleep wouldn’t really hurt either of them.

 

With Zechs becoming a heavy, softly breathing weight on his shoulder, Otto took a moment to sweep the worst of the detritus off the night stand into the top drawer, and then used a foot to tug at one of the abandoned blankets and bring it to him, covering the two of them over lightly.

 

That done, Otto closed his own eyes and drifted off.

 

The screaming alarms flung him awake again less than an hour later.  
  


 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's interested, the file creation date for this chapter was 15/10/2008.... Yeah, I've been doing this a while.... no, I do NOT need a new hobby :-)

 

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing - Forward Operating Base_

 

 

The alert alarms were shrill, piercing sirens that shattered the eardrums and set the heart to racing even when they were sounded for expected drills in the middle of the day. At four in the morning, unprepared, they threw Zechs from a sound sleep so hard he was left dizzy.

 

He sat up reflexively, almost before he’d opened his eyes, and only registered Otto doing the same when the smaller man gripped his shoulder for balance, swearing fluidly in German for a moment before switching to English.

 

“What the fuck?” Otto demanded, voice rough from sleep.

 

“The alert sirens,” Zechs replied, raising his voice to be heard over the racket. “Get up!” he ordered.

 

Otto hadn’t really needed to be told; he’d been moving to scramble from the bed almost before Zechs had answered him, reaching to hit the switch that would flood the room with light and grabbing for his uniform where he’d piled it onto a chair the night before.

 

Zechs watched him for a moment, then realised he should be following his own instructions. He pushed back the tangled weight of the sheet he was wrapped in, swung his feet to the floor and stood – and immediately had to sit back down again as his head swam and his balance deserted him.

 

He sat for a moment, letting the world reel around him, then took a deep breath and tried again, ready for the head rush and already poised to counter it. After being woken the way he had it was no surprise that he was disoriented but he really didn’t have time to deal with it.

 

He found his own uniform – like Otto’s, piled on a nearby chair – and began tugging it on. He’d managed his underwear, socks, breeches and boots, and he was just reaching for his undershirt when his door slammed open with something of a crash.

 

Both Zechs and Otto froze in place for a heartbeat before they both went for the belts still lying on the chairs and the gun holsters they held. Otto was still fumbling with his but Zechs had his pistol drawn, in his hand and levelled at the doorway as Treize’s tall figure became clear.

 

“Don’t shoot your Commander,” the older man said dryly, stopping exactly where he was and holding still with his hands open until Zechs dropped his aim.

 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” the blond apologised and Treize shook his head, stepping into the room properly and half-shutting the door behind himself again.

 

“For having good reflexes?” he asked, allowing himself the tiniest of smiles. “Nothing to apologise for.”

 

He kept his gaze on his friend until the blond had returned his smile and then he allowed midnight eyes to sweep the room. They landed lightly on Otto, the cluttered nightstand, the scattered pillows and the wreck of the bed, and Zechs felt himself blushing furiously as they came back to him and his state of undress.

 

“Are you fit to fly?” Treize asked Zechs levelly, his expression completely neutral. Clearly, he’d seen something in his observing which had made him think the younger man might not be. “If you’ve been drinking, tell me now,” he ordered.

 

Zechs opened his mouth to deny that he had been, stopped himself and lifted his chin, glancing at Otto and then at the ornate green bottle on his nightstand. “We shared a couple of glasses of Absinthe,” he answered honestly, “but that was over most of the evening and the last of it was a couple of hours ago.” He shrugged. “I’ve touched nothing else. I’ll be fine to fly.”

 

Treize nodded his understanding, his eyes warming a little at the unvarnished reply. “All right. I’ll need you to finish getting dressed, please,” he asked. “You as well, Otto, if you wouldn’t mind. At the very least, you’ll need to go back to your own bunk for the rest of the night.”

 

Otto pulled his spine straight in the closest approximation of a salute that wouldn’t look silly in the circumstances and replied with a quietly murmured, “Yes, sir.”

 

Treize flicked him an appreciative glance, then centred his gaze squarely back on Zechs, who was rapidly putting the finishing touches to his appearance.

 

“Are we under attack?” Zechs asked suddenly, running his hands through his hair to pull it back from his face in some sort of order. The result was far from perfect but it was presentable enough, given the hour and the circumstances.

 

Otto looked at Treize as well, finding he wanted the answer to the question, too, now that it had been asked. An attack was the most likely explanation for the still-screaming alarms, although the fact that Treize was still standing the doorway did rather suggest something a little less critical.

 

Sure enough, the Commander shook his head. “No, we aren’t,” he reassured. “The J.A.P. main base in Auckland, however, is under assault by rebels in Mark I Aries’.”

 

Zechs blinked in shock. “Sorry, what?” he asked reflexively. The idea of assaulting a major Alliance staging point with badly trained troops and outdated mecha sounded like the sincerest form of lunacy to him.

 

Treize smiled at him with a certain amount of cynical relish, acknowledging that he thought much the same thing. “I know,” he said quietly. “I strongly think the Alliance will be finding a new Base Commander by the end of the day. This region may have been stable for the last few years but that’s no excuse for letting his security slip as much as it must have for this to happen.” He gestured lightly and dismissively. “Regardless, Auckland is under attack and, even if we weren’t closest unit available for response, General Catalonia would have jumped at the chance to show the Alliance what we can do. We’ve been ordered to deploy a single Squadron to Auckland and get the situation under control.”

 

Zechs and Otto exchanged one more swift look, and in doing so, almost missed Treize running another assessing gaze over his blond friend.

 

Almost, but not quite. Zechs raised a silent eyebrow at the inspection but seemed to make nothing of it – perhaps because he’d spent most of his life measuring up to Treize’s standards. Otto, on the other hand, watched the Commander scrutinise the younger man and had to bite his lip as he realised what Treize was doing, what he was looking for.

 

Before the tension in the room could become uncomfortable, Treize broke it by turning on his heel sharply. “Report to your alert station, Mr Maxillian,” he ordered softly. “Lieutenant, I need you in the wardroom immediately.”

 

He disappeared through the door, leaving Zechs and Otto to stare after him blankly for a moment.

 

“What is he up to?” Zechs asked the air, a tight frown between his eyebrows. “Why did he come here in person like that? There was no need. And why did he trip the alert sirens?” He scowled harder. “It’s overkill for a single Squadron deployment, to say the least, but if we aren’t under direct attack, there’s only Treize with the authority to sound them.”

 

Otto shrugged. “I can’t tell you why the Commander tripped the sirens,” he replied quietly, before he smiled up at his friend in what he hoped was reassuring fashion, “but I wouldn’t be so sure there was no need for his house call, love,” he warned. He waited a heartbeat, then reached up a little to press a fleeting kiss to the blonde’s lips. “I have to go, angel,” he explained. “If I don’t see you again before, good luck and Godspeed.”

 

The dark-haired pilot turned away from his lover and was out of the door before Zechs had really heard what he’d said. By the time he had, and by the time it had filtered through his sleep-and-shock clouded mind, it was too late. Otto was gone and, to chase him, Zechs would have to go in completely the opposite direction to the one he needed for the wardroom.

 

“Oh, my God,” Zechs breathed to himself as the reality of the situation dawned on him. For the first time, tripped deliberately or not, the sirens shattering the air around him were the real thing, not a training exercise. For the first time, he was being summoned to a command briefing that wasn’t all theoretical, with no Instructors to advise him if he got stuck and explain his mistakes. For the first time, Treize was asking him to step up to the full responsibility of the position he’d been trusted with, where there would be no chance to start again if he made a wrong choice.

 

The blond swallowed hard as that thought lead to the inevitable next. For the first time, his actions and decisions would be weighed only by the success or failure of his mission; his only assessment would be whether he, and the pilots under his command, lived or died.

 

“Oh, my God,” Zechs said again, feeling his pulse rate rocket as adrenaline flooded his body, making his hands shake as he reached for his belt and fastened it around his narrow waist. His stomach clenched hard and he used the ritual of checking his service pistol, popping the clip and checking it was loaded , readying the gun to fire, to suppress the urge to gag.

 

He refused to look at the thoughts that wanted to rise with his actions – that in a few hours, he might have to use this gun, for the first time, against another human being and not a paper target – and forced himself to take a step towards his door.

 

This, then, was the reality he’d bargained for, what he’d spent three years training for. Zechs had thought he was ready, that he’d face this moment with the same calm and self-confidence he’d faced the Academy, but it seemed he’d been wrong about that. He wished Otto had stayed a little longer, for comfort, and then he was glad the other boy hadn’t for the sake of his pride.

 

He wished Treize had waited for him, pride be damned, and that feeling didn’t go away at all as Zechs steeled himself with a deep breath and ran for the wardroom.

 

 

************************

 

 

 

Zechs was the last of the command officers to arrive at the wardroom and, to make matters worse, all of the others looked far calmer and more focussed than Zechs felt.

 

He took a deep breath at the door, squared his shoulders and faked a smile, grateful for the glasses that hid his eyes as he crossed the room and dropped into his designated chair. He was seated next to Captain Chennault, and Zechs had to stare as he noticed that the Cajun man was still fastening his cravat and that he’d apparently, from the steaming cup next to him, taken the time in the midst of the shrieking alarms to make himself a pot of coffee.

 

“Bonjour, Lieutenant,” Chennault greeted civilly. “You don’t happen to know why the Major felt it necessary to deprive us all of our sleep, do you? We’ve been trying to work it out and we’re all failing spectacularly. There seems to be a complete lack of an attack happening, after all.”

 

Zechs froze at the question, glancing around to see that almost every eye in the room was fixed on him steadily, waiting for his answer. It did nothing to help his nerves, at all.

 

He glanced around again, noting the cool expectation in the five gazes coming from his fellow Squadron Leaders and the more muted interest in those of the half-dozen Support Unit commanders, and felt his skin go cold. What was the matter with him? he wondered. No exam, no assessment, no interview had ever rattled him, and he’d never had a fear of authority in his life, so why was he suddenly so acutely aware of the gap between himself and every other officer in the room.

 

And there was a gap; Zechs couldn’t have failed notice that. Even with his unusual height and striking appearance disguising his age, even with the illusion of his customised coat and false double promotion, Zechs was obviously the youngest officer in the room, the most junior in terms of actual rank and service length, the only one lacking the surety of experience all the others possessed. He wondered, suddenly, if this group of tried and tested aces resented being under the nominal command of a teenage boy.

 

“Well?” the Cajun man prompted, making Zechs flush slightly as he realised he’d forgotten to answer.

 

“Sorry,” he apologised automatically. “The J.A.P. base in Auckland has been attacked by rebels. General Catalonia has ordered Commander Treize to deploy a single Squadron as relief,” he explained.

 

The immediate reaction of the room was mixed. Some officers sat up a little straighter, their eyes flashing; others did the opposite, relaxing and yawning as the tension drained out of them. The best reaction was that of the 6th Squadron Leader, who promptly put his head down on the shoulder of the officer next to him and closed his eyes.

 

“Wake me when we’re done, hmm, Xavi?” he asked, his Greek accent making the words a lilt as he sprawled in his chair.

 

Zechs watched, surprised, as the other officer laughed indulgently, patting the first on the arm affectionately. “Yes, Your Highness,” he replied cheerfully and rolled his flashing black eyes at the rest of the room, making most of those assembled snort with their own laughter.

 

The interplay was sufficient to remind Zechs of who the two men were and he raised a wondering eyebrow at their interaction.

 

The dark-eyed man currently being used as a pillow was Treize’s 5th Squadron Leader, a Spaniard who had a well-earned reputation as a Leo ace. Captain Xavier, the Honourable Don Velásquez, had been a classmate of Treize’s at Victoria Academy, vying with him for the title of Valedictorian as Zechs had with Noin, and then an ongoing friend to one degree or another over the years since.

 

The man leaning on the Don, the 6th Squadron Leader, was the next-youngest of the Officers in the room, having a bare eighteen months on Zechs in age and only two years seniority. At seventeen and some change, Lieutenant Aristedes probably shouldn’t have had the experience to rank as Squadron leader, save that he was one of only a handful of combat aces in the entire of the Specials to have earned the title behind the controls of the water-based mecha, the Pisces and Zechs’s hated Cancer. Since the sixth Squadron was, in fact, comprised entirely of those two suits, the Greek-born Aristedes was an ideal choice to command it, young or not.

 

What was making Zechs curious, though, were not the two men’s military ranks and accomplishments but the more personal details he knew about them. For one thing, Captain Xavier seemed awfully comfortable with Aristedes given that he was one of the two officers Zechs had overheard discussing the merits of various women with Treize at the welcoming party. On the basis of that conversation, Zechs had been assuming that Xavier, like Chennault, the other man involved, was straight and straight men did not, in Zechs's experience, appreciate other men cosying up to them.

 

Especially when the other man was making every instinct Zechs possessed tingle with interest, until the blond would have been willing to bet a global announcement of his true identity that the Pisces pilot was as gay as he, himself, was.

 

It was a realisation that led neatly to the other thing that was peculiar, whilst simultaneously offering something of an explanation for it.

 

The Pisces ace might be Lieutenant Aristedes to the Specials, but in non-military circles, he was better known as His Royal Highness, Prince Leander III, the fourth child of Greece's current King and Queen, and third in line to the Hellenic throne.

 

Zechs had been openly surprised when Treize had shown him the paperwork detailing that fact because, for all the Specials tendency towards blue-blooded officers, there weren't many true Royals openly in the service, and almost none that were in the direct line of succession to an active Crown. Royal blood was precious, too precious, in most cases, to risk to the cruelties of a military career. Aristedes should have been at home, preparing to serve his country, readying himself for the inevitable marriage of State he would one day be asked to make.

 

If Zechs was right about the Prince, though, that marriage would be rather off the cards and his worth to his family commensurately reduced. It remained to be seen whether Aristedes had therefore joined the Specials because that reduction made him free to pursue something he actually wanted to do, or because becoming an ace officer with a hero's reputation was the only thing he could think of to restore some of his value.

 

To Zechs's side, Chennault suddenly chuckled. “Ah,” he sighed. “Trust the Princeling to see to the heart of the matter,” he said softly. “Very much like his oceans, that child. All surface froth and hidden depths. Savvy to realise there's no place for him and his in Auckland.”

 

Zechs blinked at the older man, fighting through the sticky-tar accent to the meaning of his words, and realised with some surprise that the Cajun man was right. Aristedes' Squadron of twelve Pisces and six Cancer would be useless in a counter-attack of the kind Treize had to be planning. It made his presence at this meeting near-to pointless and once again, Zechs was forced to wonder what his surrogate brother was up to.

 

“Would that they were all so smart,” Chennault continued, still talking only to Zechs. “Are you ready, Baby Bird?” he asked suddenly, leaving Zechs on the hop again.

 

“Ready for what?” he asked, confused. He frowned at the older man and Chennault laughed softly.

 

“To fly, child,” the Cajun man chuckled. “What else are you here for?”

 

Zechs was forced to swallow hard as the older man's words filtered through. “Oh, my God,” he said, much as he had in his rooms. “Do you think...?” he asked, and cursed himself for the fact that his voice was shaking enough to show his nerves.

 

“That the Major will ask you?” Chennault finished for Zechs. “Oui, I do.” He let his laughter soften to a rather warming smile, amber eyes studying Zechs closely. “He is responding to a personal call from the General, to send a single Squadron and show off a little. What do you think that delightfully Machiavellian mind will do?”

 

Zechs hesitated, trying to think past the surge of alarm he was feeling. Was the Cajun man right in his assessment? Zechs didn’t know, but he did know what he would have done in Treize’s position.

 

Faced with the same decision, Zechs knew he would have immediately looked at his Squadrons and his Squadron Commanders, trying to decide who could get the job done with the most efficiency and the most style.

 

Slowly, Zechs looked around the room again, assessing his fellow Squadron leaders and recalling everything he knew about them as he tried to pre-empt Treize’s decision making. It wouldn’t – couldn’t – be Aristedes, that had already been decided, and Zechs didn’t think it was likely to be Don Velásquez. The 5th Squadron had been having trouble with some of their formations lately, losing seconds off their performance times in the process. It was nothing serious, but why would Treize risk anything less than perfection for this critical first mission when he had four other Squadrons to choose from?

 

Those two dismissed, Zechs looked next at the 3rd and 4th Squadron Leaders. An Irish man and a French woman, both Leo aces, Captain Sir Robin Muskerry (Baronet) and Lieutenant Hillarie, the Most Honourable Marchioness de Valois, were sitting next to each other as well, casting each other glances that were not entirely friendly. It took Zechs a moment to realise that they’d come to the conclusions he and Chennault had, rejected Aristedes and Velásquez, and now were trying to make the next cut.

 

It wasn’t, Zechs’s instincts told him immediately, going to be either of them. There was another first Treize could add to this little jaunt to Auckland, and that was to show off something that had been a real feather in the cap for his unit.

 

From somewhere, whether through clever management of resources or through family connections, Treize had managed to have the Aries suits assigned to his Wing all be the new Mark III models. They were the height of technology, incorporating design and control components that Treize himself had suggested and, as yet, there was no other Alliance unit using them in the field.

 

Five of the six Squadrons in the Wing included a number of Aries suits, but only two were headed by them and if they were going to be used, Zechs was sure that, this first time, Treize wouldn’t want them tucked in the back of the fight, ignored by pilot’s with no real feel for the mecha. He’d want them front and centre, taking on their own predecessors.

 

It came, then, down to either the 1st or 2nd Squadrons; Chennault’s, including Otto, or Zechs’s own.

 

Chennault must somehow have been tracking Zechs’s thought process because he smiled again just as the younger man reached his conclusions. “You see?” he asked. “It wasn't ever going to be anyone but you or I, no?” he teased.

 

Zechs nodded mutely, wondering just how obvious it was to every other officer in the room that he was suddenly feeling very shaky.

 

Using the shield of his glasses again, he closed his eyes and tried to pull himself together. This was ridiculous, he told himself firmly, pathetic. He’d had years of training, he was a damn fine pilot and it wasn’t as though he was a stranger to the reality of war. He’d had plenty of firsthand experience of that in the days following the attack on his home. He really should have long been past any possibility of schoolboy nerves.

 

No matter how firmly he told himself that, it didn’t change the fact that his heart had been racing since the sirens had shocked him awake, that he was sweating enough to feel it pooling unpleasantly on his skin and that his stomach kept jumping as though he were in the middle of a stormy ocean. He drew a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to blow off some of the tension with it, and near to jumped half out of his skin when someone touched his arm lightly.

 

He snapped his eyes open and turned his head to see that it was Chennault, as might have been predicted. He was the only one close enough to Zechs to have made physical contact without having to move.

 

Jean-Remy’s smile was warm, if a little distant, and his expression was pleasantly neutral. Only his hawkish golden eyes betrayed him, sharp and merciless as they raked Zechs over, reading every last sign of his incipient panic with far more ease than the blond would have liked.

 

Zechs tensed a little more, waiting for the older man to call him on it – and found himself blinking in surprise when the Cajun man did nothing more than raise a curious eyebrow and pick up a spare mug from somewhere.

 

“Coffee?” he asked companiably, lifting the pot in offer and Zechs found himself nodding again, blankly, accepting the drink without ever really intending to.

 

“Glad to know I’m not the only addict in the ranks. Cream, sugar?”

 

“No, thank you.”

 

Zechs felt suddenly proud of himself that his voice had been completely steady as he answered, and, from the knowing flash in Chennault’s eyes, the older man approved as well.

 

“Rather you than me, Baby Bird,” he drawled, his accent muddying the words but he poured the second cup of coffee without tampering with it.

 

He handed it over without seeming as though he was going to add anything further but before Zechs could pull the cup away from the other man’s grip completely, the Cajun man smiled again. “It doesn’t go away, mon ami,” he said softly, so softly that Zechs had to struggle to hear him.

 

“What doesn’t?” Zechs asked automatically, scowling.

 

Chennault tipped his head, and countered a question with a question. “How do you feel?” he enquired quietly.

 

“Like I’m going to throw up.”

 

The reply was reflexive, ill-considered and Zechs immediately felt heat stain his skin in embarrassment. “Not that I will,” he hurried to correct, and knew he wasn’t convincing.

 

The older pilot made Zechs feel even more wet behind the ears by chuckling gently at him. “Of course not,” he agreed. “But it is good that you feel that way. It shows the temperament of a future ace,” Chennault confided, winking conspiratorially before sobering. “Understand, Baby Bird, it is the adrenaline you’re burning that’s making you nervy, and the tension of that, the anticipation, that’s making you feel queasy.” He gave a lazy shrug. “It will never be as bad again as it is for you right now, but it also never goes away. It would be a shame if it did, because then you would have lost your fire.”

 

As Zechs frowned in surprise, Jean-Remy gestured subtly with his own coffee cup, indicating the other pilots in the room. “Look at them,” he ordered quietly. “They feel it, just like you. We all do. What matters is what you do with it. Most pilots never learn more than to ignore it, work past it, and so most are never more than adequate.” He shook his head dismissively. “A special few learn to channel it, to bank it down to a steady glow and let it fuel them from inside whilst they stay clear and cool on the surface. Commander Treize is one of those – but you knew that already, I suspect?” Chennault asked and Zechs found himself nodding in agreement, realising he had known something very like that, even if he hadn’t been aware of the knowledge.

 

“ _Bien_ ,” Jean-Remy continued. “Good. His is a useful trick, and you could do worse than to copy it, but you could also do better.” He smirked suddenly. “The rarest pilots, the true aces, we learn to ride the fire inside of us and let it take us to places that others can only dream of.”

 

Zechs considered for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “How?” he demanded, his voice intense for all that it was no louder than the Cajun man’s had been.

 

Jean-Remy’s smirk became a wicked grin. “We let go,” he said. “We surrender to it. We let it burn us inside and out, throw caution to the wind, and throw ourselves off whatever cliffs present themselves to us. We let the instincts God gave us rule. And then we climb into the cockpit and we _fly!_ ”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow at the explanation, almost ready to dismiss it as a peculiarly Louisianan brand of psychobabble until he caught the expression in Jean-Remy’s hawkish eyes. There was a fierceness and a fire to the golden gaze that Zechs couldn’t just ignore out of hand, not when he knew he’d felt the same instincts in himself before, just once or twice when Noin had really been pushing him.

 

And, unaccountably, as the Cajun man had talked to him, Zechs had felt some of his nerviness settling into just the kind of burning drive Chennault was talking about. So much so, in fact, that when Zechs turned his head as the wardroom door opened, it was to greet Treize with a confident smile that made the other man study him for a moment and then smile back, obviously pleased.

 

So pleased, apparently, that his opening words to the assembled officers were an announcement that it was Zechs’s 1st Squadron that was going to Auckland.

 

 

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some sections of text, mostly speech, are drawn directly from the Episode Zero Manga, which, of course I did not write and do not own.
> 
> And, oh boy, was it fun getting some of it to scan in conversational English and fit to something resembling an actual military deployment. :-)

_ Mid July AC 191 _

_ Transport Plane ZW -01 – Pacific Ocean _

 

 

Zechs focussed on running through his Aries’ pre-flight check, concentrating on the flicking of thebuttons and the testing of the controls in a way he never had before. It was a new suit, a new type of suit, and he was a new pilot. There was already so much chance for things to go wrong that he didn’t need an instrument failure or a sticking joint to make matters worse.

 

His mind wasn’t entirely on the job, though, he could admit that. In the back of his head, all he could hear were snippets of various conversations he’d either taken part in or overheard that morning.

 

His words with Jean-Remy were playing heaviest, and he reminded himself to thank the Cajun when he got back to base. Whatever lesson the older pilot had been trying to teach, he had at least managed to stop Zechs feeling quite so much like he was going to spew all over his boots, and for long enough for the blond to remember all the reasons why he didn’t have to be nervous.

 

Alongside his own conversation with the American ace, though, was a conversation he’d heard the older man having with Treize in the hanger as the Wing Commander readied his own Aries for loading onto the transport plane.

 

“… _sure ’bout dis, sir?”_ Remy had said to Treize, and Zechs had found himself suddenly listening into an exchange he probably hadn’t been meant to hear. _“He no-ting bu’ a boy an’ a nervy one a’ dat.”_

 

Treize had laughed softly. _“Was I any better, Remy?”_ He’d shaken his head in the shadows cast in the fluorescent glare by his Aries. _“It’s you or him, and even if it wasn’t pure illogic to send you and then go myself as well, even if it wasn’t set up that I fly with his Squadron and not taking him when I’m going would be as good as saying that I don’t trust him, I have to consider Catalonia’s PR plans.”_

 

“ _So, you be takin’ de boy ‘cause he need de star’ to ‘is reputation an’ I got no-ting lef’ to prove?”_ Remy had wondered.

 

There had been a moment of silence following the Cajun man’s question. _“You don’t think he can handle it?”_ Treize had asked quietly.

 

“ _Nah, sir, he c’n handle any-t’ing yeh t’row at‘im. Dat one, he figh’ like lightnin’!”_

 

Treize’s voice had been genuinely curious when he spoke again. _“The rumours I’ve been hearing are true then?”_ he asked. _“He’s picked up performance time since he left the Academy?”_

 

“ _Oui. A bi’ a salt an’ pepper an’ dat one’ll be really somet’ing. De ol’ Red Stick’ll be pleased t’ call ‘im sir.”_

 

Zechs had blinked at that last statement, trying to puzzle though the tarry accent and the curious words to the meaning, so that he’d lost the rest of what Remy had said to Treize. ‘Red Stick’, Zechs knew, was a nickname Jean-Remy sometimes answered to, a double play on the literal meaning of his hometown’s name – Baton Rouge – and the idea of a combat bloodied pilot’s control stick, no doubt, but that was all he could fathom.

 

The other thing that kept playing through his mind was the way that all of the other Squadron leaders had managed to be in the hanger just before Treize boarded the transport plane and the way they’d all offered him some words of hope for his success. Muskerry had simply echoed Otto’s words to Zechs, wishing Treize ‘Godspeed’ and Aristedes had volunteered only the Specials salute, bidding the Wing Commander to ‘Shine with the Stars, sir!’ but the others had been more unique – and informative.

 

Don Velásquez had shown the friendship between the two men went deeper than professional rivalry by gripping Treize’s forearm and murmuring something in Latin that Zechs was almost sure was a prayer. Lieutenant Hillarie de Valois had grinned at the redhead like a shark about to strike and bid him ‘Good Hunting!’ and Chennault had sent Treize onto the plane with a laughing recitation of the Cajun motto, ‘ _Laissez les bon temps rouler!’_

 

Zechs, personally, couldn’t see what ‘good times’ there were to ‘let roll’ in a military combat mission but he was willing to acknowledge that he might be unaware of something.

 

What had really struck him about the whole thing was the fact that none of them, not even the surprisingly friendly Jean-Remy, had so much as looked at Zechs, even though he’d been standing immediately behind Treize and plainly in sight. It had been as though he didn’t exist, and he’d been surprised to find that he was a little hurt by it.

 

“Zechs?”

 

Treize’s voice echoed up from the floor of the plane and bounced back off the bare metal of the ceiling as it cut suddenly into the younger man’s thoughts, distracting him very nicely from analysing his feelings of pique.

 

“Zechs? What are you doing?”

 

The blond pilot sighed to himself, knowing he couldn’t ignore the older man as much as he would have liked to. He was happier sitting in his cockpit, running pre-flight checks and he wished Treize could have had one of those flashes of insight he normally summoned up, so that he would have known to leave Zechs alone.

 

Somewhat unwillingly, Zechs moved to the open hatch of his suit and stuck his head through it, looking down at the steel-mesh decking and the figure of his brother. “Checking the suit,” he answered honestly.

 

Treize frowned in the harsh lighting, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glare as he looked up. “Can I ask why? You’ve done it three times already and you’ll do it again before we deploy.”

 

Zechs shrugged tightly. “I’m just making sure,” he said diffidently, then bit his lip before admitting, “It gives me something to do.”

 

He wasn’t sure how Treize would take his confession, but he certainly wasn’t expecting the older man to laugh at him softly and make a beckoning gesture with his free hand.

 

“I’m sure,” Treize replied. “Come down, will you? I want to talk to you.”

 

Zechs sighed again, and swung himself out of the hatch agilely, grabbing the hoist line and letting it take him to the ground. He dropped the last couple of feet, letting go of the line and letting gravity take over, and Treize raised an indulgent eyebrow at the display of teenage energy and impatience.

 

He snapped something of a salute as he straightened to face Treize, obeying protocol, then relaxed his posture as the older officer waved away the formality. “Sir?” he asked politely.

 

Treize waved that away as well. “I said I wanted to talk to you, Zechs, not give you orders.” He gazed at Zechs steadily, his blue eyes flicking left to right and up and down as he studied the younger man. It was a look Zechs thought was half commanding officer and half concerned older sibling, something he’d stood up to dozens of times, not least in his rooms first thing that morning.

 

“I’m all right, Treize,” he said quietly, answering the question Treize’s scrutinising asked, and which the Commander couldn’t voice out loud.

 

The tension in Treize’s shoulders eased a little but his head tilted to one side doubtfully. “Are you?” he checked. “Jean-Remy said you seemed uncomfortable, and you’ve been all but hiding in here since we took off.” He frowned slightly, reddish eyebrows drawing together. “It’s normal for you to feel a little nervous,” he started, and Zechs stopped him by chuckling dryly.

 

“So I was told,” he laughed. “I’ll admit to ‘a little nervous’,” he confessed. “Captain Chennault talked me out of having a complete breakdown.”

 

“Oh?” Treize wondered but his expression smoothed and he nodded. “He’s always been good at that. It’s part of the reason I wanted him.” He smiled a little, diffidently. “He did much the same thing for me, before my first mission,” he confessed quietly.

 

Zechs blinked in surprise. “You?” he asked blankly, then shook his head. “Come on, Treize. I can’t imagine you being nervous.”

 

“You can’t?” Treize asked, surprised. “And I could have sworn you were there when I got married, and when Marie was born!” he teased warmly. “If you didn’t think I was nervous then, I was doing a better job of hiding how I felt than I thought I was,” he quipped. “As for me being nervous before my first mission, well….” Treize let his voice trail off into a dismissive shrug. “If you can catch Jean-Remy when he’s drunk sometime, ask him how many times I threw up between being told we were going and getting to the actual drop zone. Remy was my Squadron leader and, if I recall correctly, he was genuinely worried about me dehydrating mid-mission.” He gave another shrug, this one tighter and more self-deprecating. “I tried telling him that being nervous has always made me queasy but he wasn’t for believing it.”

 

Zechs laughed softly. “I’m not sure I’m for believing it,” he replied honestly.

 

Treize raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” he asked. “I am only human, Zechs, and I had less idea of what to expect than you do now. Why wouldn’t I be frightened by that?”

 

“I don’t know,” Zechs answered. He laughed suddenly. “At least I haven’t chucked up yet,” he dared, watching Treize’s dark eyes flash with indignation before they settled back into quietly understanding good humour.

 

“As well you shouldn’t,” he warned lightly. “I was nothing more than a fledgling pilot. You’re a Squadron leader and my 1st Lieutenant. The pilots will be looking to you for courage and direction. You can’t afford to show anything other than complete confidence in them, the mission, and yourself.”

 

Treize gestured suddenly, his gaze turning serious. “Consider this your first practical lesson in command responsibility. A doubtful leader is worse than no leader at all. Even if you don’t have the first, faintest idea what to do next, it must always look as though you know exactly what you’re about. Do you remember what I drilled into all of you at the Academy?”

 

Zechs nodded immediately. “Of course I do. ‘The first rule of combat command is that the wrong decision is always better than no decision at all,’” he quoted automatically.

 

“Good,” Treize said firmly. “Remember it – it’s absolutely true. And,” he added, “it’s also the reason I came to find you. You can’t hide in here for the entire flight. You have a job to do and an appearance to maintain. I need you to come and sit in the cabin with me where you can be seen and talk to me where you can be heard. There’s a lot riding on this mission. I need everything to look perfect.”

 

Zechs blinked as he processed all that, suddenly realising he was seeing a flash of Treize’s own nerves. He immediately cursed himself for not being more empathic. Of course Treize was nervous – everything he’d done in his career, everything he hoped for the future was riding on the success of this experimental Wing. If they screwed up today, on this first deployment, they might one day recover from it but it would always linger, scratching the reputation of both the Wing and, by extension, its Commander.

 

That realisation in mind, Zechs drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders and found what he hoped was a steady smile. “Sure,” he answered the older man. “Lead on, sir.”

 

Treize flashed what might have been a grateful smile, and turned on his heel to head across the hanger to the small metal hatch that separated it from the passenger cabin and the flight deck.

 

 

**********************

 

 

“We’re now over the J.A.P. point, Commander. We’ll enter the Combat Zone in 300 seconds, and counting.”

 

The voice of the transport pilot was completely level as he relayed information to Treize, and by extension, to the whole passenger compartment. Sitting next to his commander in the flight cabin, Zechs stared out at the sparkling blue of the ocean as the plane banked sharply, vectoring to begin the high-speed run that would allow it to drop its mobile suits over the hot zone.

 

Sitting with Treize, talking a mixture of command strategy and meaningless personal gossip, had done a lot to settle Zechs’s nerves but they were back now. At the certainty that he had less than five minutes before he would be engaged in his first real combat, the knot in his stomach had tightened again and his breath was catching in his throat.

 

He covered it with a grimace as he turned back to Treize, noting that the older man’s dark eyes were steady on his face as he did so. “I still don’t get it,” Zechs said clearly, knowing that, by now, more people than just Treize were listening to his words – or would be, when the mission telemetry was analysed. “ _Why_ are they sending the Specials to suppress some tiny rebel faction?”

 

Treize raised an eyebrow, his face and voice utterly neutral as he replied. Only his eyes, warming suddenly, betrayed his gratitude for the perfect opening Zechs had just given him. This was his first full Command – if his career went the way they both hoped and intended it would, then anything he said here, today, might one day be the stuff of quotes and legends.

 

“Our commander, General Catalonia, wants to assess our capabilities,” Treize answered, then offered the smallest of grins to the other man. “And your capabilities as well, Officer Marquise,” he warned. He flicked the button mike in his collar that would keep him in contact with the transport plane and with the rest of the unit, snapped open his seat belt and stood up, waiting until Zechs had done the same before moving towards the flight deck again.

 

It was a matter of a few seconds to make the walk – even a suit transport wasn’t that big of a plane – and then they were standing in the gloom of the bay, looking at each other silently.

 

Zechs didn’t have a clue what to say. It was a weighted moment and one that was passing faster than he would have liked. There were a thousand things he wanted to tell Treize clamouring in his mind, all and none of them important enough to be said right now, save that he might never have another chance to say them at all. Even if they both came through this totally unharmed – and it was the most likely outcome, even nerves didn’t stop Zechs acknowledging that – they’d come through it to be something other than what they were now. Finally, Zechs had the chance to jump one of the last gaps remaining between the two of them but to do it, he’d have to cut himself from the support of the older man and stand free and alone for the first time in ten years. There would be no going back from that.

 

“Sir,” he said unsteadily. “Treize….”

 

“Hush,” Treize bade gently. He rested one warm, gloved hand against Zechs’s cheekbone for a moment, his sapphire eyes grave and excited at the same time, then stepped back. “Go,” he commanded, flicking his eyes to Zechs’s waiting suit with an incline of his head. “Fly for me, Illia. Make me proud. _Po_ _zhjedanije uspjeha!_ ”

 

Zechs bit his lip at the words; Treize had bid him the ‘Godspeed’ his colleagues had denied the blond and done so in his native Russian, the palletised vowels and sharper consonants of his Moscow accent making his rich voice wonderfully throaty and soft.

Caught by his own reaction, Zechs swallowed hard, then bobbed his head in acknowledgement and turned on his heel to walk swiftly across the bay.

 

He caught the hoist line to his suit without looking back and, by the time he turned to drop into his cockpit chair, Treize had vanished behind the bulk of his own suit.

 

It was autopilot from there that saw Zechs relax back into the padding of his seat, settling his body before snapping his safety harness closed around his chest. The heavy straps held him firmly, a comforting feeling as he keyed his serial number into the master control panel and brought the suit to life.

 

Automatically, he reached to square himself off to his flight surfaces and controls - three years of drilling at the Academy making him place his feet straight forward and dead centre on the left and right thruster throttles, his elbows in solid contact with the edge of the arm rests and his back straight – then he hesitated. Practically the first thing Jean-Remy had done in their secretive flying lesson had been yell at him to, _“Get that damned Academy stick out of your rear, child, and relax. No-one’s docking you marks for your feet being a quarter-inch off the line anymore and you’ll never learn to really fly whilst you’re all twisted up like that!”_

 

He’d been reluctant, at first, but he’d had to admit that the older pilot was making sense. Drilling cadets in the precise, correct ways to manipulate their controls was necessary for safety, but surely an experienced pilot would perform better if he wasn’t fighting against his own muscles and joints to hold a posture he didn’t need anymore? He’d obeyed the instruction as much as possible, won himself a grin from the Cajun, and quickly been shown a thousand other tricks that he couldn’t have begun to pull off whilst his feet, hands, knees, elbows and spine were nailed to the Academy ‘Correct Flight Position’ chart.

 

He’d tried it, in simulator runs, and if Otto had been right last night, then it was paying dividends but did he dare deviate in his first combat sortie? If he screwed up because of it, Treize would have his guts for garters for Lady Une, and rightly so.

 

That said, it had been Treize who’d sent him to the lesson in the first place. If he didn’t want Zechs using what Chennault had to teach, why would he do that?

 

Decision made, Zechs closed his eyes for a moment – well aware that a moment was likely all he had – and recalled the other thing Jean-Remy had said to him over and over again. _“You need to fall for your suit a little, Marquise,_ the older man had instructed, smirking. _“Open up to it, trust it – it won’t bite…much. Pretend you’re about to make love to it – assuming you know how, baby bird! – and learn to feel for your cues, sense them, rather than looking for the monitors. If you aren’t flying on instinct and nerve-endings, you’re doing it wrong.”_

 

It was a weird notion, and Zechs was sure there had to be a better way to phrase it, but there was definitely something to it. As Zechs keyed his engine start switch, he could, privately, admit to himself that there was something thrilling and a little sensual about the power rolling though the suit, tamed to his command.

 

It made him smile as he feathered his controls, bringing his Aries into its designated position for deployment, and then keyed his radio open. “This is Zodiac-Alpha-One,” he said clearly. “I have a green-light across the panel. Requesting drop clearance.”

 

The voice of the plane’s co-pilot came back to him immediately. “Roger, Zodiac-Alpha-One. You are Go for Drop in 15 seconds, mark.”

 

“Acknowledged. Standing by.”

 

Zechs drew a deep breath, tapping his controls again to grant his suit independent balance. Mentally counting down the seconds, he reached out to flick the toggles that would bring up his tactical displays and release the magnetic clamps holding his Aries to the deck of the plane.

 

The heavy clunk of the locks disengaging was echoed almost immediately by Treize doing the same by Zechs’s left shoulder, and then by the other four Aries suits in Zechs’s Alpha Flight. His Squadron’s Two Leo Flights, Beta and Gamma, would be readying themselves on their own planes, scheduled to cross the drop zone ten and twenty seconds behind Alpha, respectively.

 

With five seconds to go, the massive rear hatch of the transport panel began to open, and the rolling transport belt built into the floor of the plane engaged, manoeuvring Zechs’s Aries so that there was nothing between it and the open sky. The blond tapped his controls a third time and heard his thrusters spin up to a stressed whine as he throttled up to full power whilst simultaneously holding the suit in place with his vector surfaces.

 

“Please, dear God,” he said to himself, being careful to keep the words under his breath as he recited the Pilot’s Prayer, “don’t let me fuck up.”

 

His recital must not have been quiet enough; there was an immediate amused chuckle from Zechs’s radio. “Heh,” Treize laughed softly. “I’m hardly imagining that as likely, Zechs.”

 

Zechs shook his head, knowing the other man couldn’t see the gesture. “I hope I’ll be able to live up to expectations,” he admitted honestly.

 

“You will,” Treize promised, then shifted his tone of voice as he shifted the nature of the conversation. “This is Zodiac Actual,” he said precisely. “I have Mission Control, Alpha-One. Relaying Tactical data now.”

 

“Data acknowledged, Zodiac Actual,” Zechs responded immediately. He let his eyes skip across the screens that were suddenly scrolling with information and images. “Adjusting Squadron deployment.”

 

Zechs flicked his fingers across his controls again, performing his primary duty in the field for the first time. As the radio chatter suggested, Treize, as Wing Commander, had overall control of any mission they flew – whether he was in the field or not, if he so chose – but the actual moment-to-moment disposition of the forces on the ground remained the purview of Zechs, in his capacity as Squadron leader.

 

The intention of the split in command was to leave the Wing Commander free to focus on the big picture, whilst using the Squad Leads to sweat the nitty-gritty details of which suit and which pilot went where and in what precise numbers. Zechs would receive strategic and tactical orders from Treize but the responsibility of breaking them down into actual troop movements and firing solutions remained with him and it was his voice and his radio-sign the other pilots would listen for and obey.

 

If the system worked, it was a major part of the Specials ability to react as swiftly and fluidly on the battlefield as they did. Although every Wing was unique, and every set of Command Staff found the power-balance between them in a slightly different place, the smooth trickle-down of information ensured clean communication lines and fast response times.

 

If the system didn’t work – well, Squadron leaders could be replaced and Zechs was acutely aware that Treize, in particular, would show no mercy in doing just that, even to him.

 

“Alpha-One to Zodiac Actual,” Zechs sent back to Treize, a moment later. “Deployment orders relayed. Commencing Drop,” he said firmly, biting hard on a sudden surge of nerves.

 

They made his movements sharp as he pressed down with his controls and flung his Aries from the moving plane.

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing, 1st Squadron - In Combat over J.A.P_

 

It took very little actual power to launch the Aries suit from the transport plane, but it did need a deft hand – and an ironclad stomach.

 

Poised at the very edge of the hangar deck, Zechs tabbed his main thrusters just enough to overbalance his inherently top-heavy mecha and throw the Aries out backwards into a suicidal spin in mid-air. Tipped under its own power and given momentum by the plane it was leaving, the Aries plummeted towards the ground in an arc, somersaulting in reverse and end over end until the rotation was nullified to bring the mecha onto the desired course.

 

It was barely controlled and blindingly fast – but that was the idea. In the limited space of the transport plane, a scarcely-powered fall was far safer than a full-powered jump simply because there was no risk of over-powering and slamming the Aries into the ceiling of the hangar. Or of cooking a comrade with mis-aimed jet wash. Free falling the suit to the correct pitch and vector after launch was also desirable because it prevented the awkward, flak-attracting moment of change from a vertical flight to a horizontal one as the engines engaged.

 

That was Treize’s theory, anyway. The launch was another of his new ideas, something he’d stumbled on at the Academy, watching ham-handed cadets try not to write-off their suits in the simulators. Zechs acknowledged the benefits but personally hated the experience. The old style of deployment – a small parachute that caught in the air stream and pulled the suit away from the plane – was much smoother, if slower.

 

In a fraction of a second, his Aries tumbled from a static standing position in the hangar to a spiralling cartwheel at 25,000 feet. Hundreds of feet of air screamed past his view ports as the suit corkscrewed head over tail over head three times before Zechs tabbed his thrusters again to bring his suit to a feet-first plunge just off the vertical, a guided missile straight into the enemy suits on the ground below him. The flickering, oscillating g-force of the fall was dizzying, the visual experience disorienting and the physical sensation positively nauseating, but testing had proven Treize right. It was faster and safer, even if drilling it had given every pilot in the Wing a shocking headache for three days and resulted in more up-chucking than Zechs had seen since his first day of zero-g training.

 

As he neutralised his rotation and caught his breath, his radio flickered to life again. “Zodiac Actual to Alpha-One. Neatly done, Officer Zechs. Let’s finish this within, oh, three minutes, shall we?” Treize asked.

 

His voice was playful, breathless and Zechs realised his adopted brother was actually enjoying himself. The surge of adrenaline caused by the deadly tumble he’d just taken caused him to reply in a like fashion, going it one better when he laughed down the radio. “Roger that, Zodiac-actual, but you’re getting slow. _One_ minute’s all I need, Commander,” he taunted lightly. “This battle will end the moment I land!”

 

In his own Aries, still blinking to clear his vision from his own launch, Treize heard Zechs’s reply and smiled appreciatively even as he raised a knowing eyebrow. Better bravado than terror, he supposed, but either could be lethal. Still, he should have known Zechs would throw himself into actual combat with a vengeance. It was how the younger man lived his entire life.

 

The ground rushed up to the meet them with alarming suddenness, one moment hundreds of feet below, the next close enough to make a crash seem inevitable. Treize made his thrusters screech at him as he killed his downward momentum, aware of Zechs doing the same before they both turned simultaneously and opened fire.

 

Around them, the rest of the Squadron screamed into view. Alpha Flight’s four other Aries were first, but the twelve Leo’s of Beta and Gamma weren’t far behind, their pilot’s jettisoning their chutes a way above the ground to match the Aries’ entry velocity and trusting in the sturdy, heavy-framed Leos to take the impact without damage.

 

Tactical screens flared to life again as the suits engaged with the enemy one after another and Treize’s cockpit was suddenly humming with the chatter over the radios. There was quickness and precision in every one of his pilots, slick polish in the way they shifted and skimmed around one another, as fluid as if they’d been a single unit for years instead of mere weeks. Treize had seen the figures and watched the computer simulations but he found now that he hadn’t been prepared for the reality of it. This first, practical testing of his ideas and theories was far more stunning than he could ever have imagined. The smaller units, the mixed suit types, the looser, more organic formations, it was all contributing to an overwhelming shock for their enemy, who couldn’t even begin to counter the skill, the state of the art technology and the sheer pace of the Specials pilots.

 

One of them in particular. As Treize concentrated the weapons of his mecha onto the much-battered form of one of its predecessors, hovering deftly a few metres off the ground to provide a second arc of fire over the head of a Leo, his attention was half on his wingman, captivated by the dazzling speed and dexterity Zechs was displaying. For all that the older man knew he had seen some stunning examples of piloting in his career – had even been responsible for one or two of them – they were nothing compared to this. Whatever tricks Jean-Remy had shown the blond, whatever Arcadian pseudo-philosophy he had imparted, Zechs had listened and absorbed it far better than Treize ever had, meshing it with his already formidable skill and blinding reflexes to produce something dangerously close to perfection.

 

“I see,” Treize said, mostly to himself, trying to break his focus on the blond man as the Aries Zechs was facing blew apart in a hailstorm of burning metal. “It’s not just talk. He fights like lightning!”

 

His comm. channel was still open, Treize knew, his words would be heard and noted by every other pilot in Zechs’s Squadron, to be relayed eagerly back to all their comrades still at the base the moment they had chance. The soubriquet would likely take – such things did amongst the Specials – and Zechs would find himself being referred to by some fancy title, just as Jean-Remy was known as the Red Stick. It was, Treize acknowledged, finally looking away as something caught at his attention on the far side of the fight, no bad thing. The moniker, whatever its final fashion became, would suit the younger man, fitting for his stunning reflexes and his striking white-gold hair. Combined with the fact that Zechs’s reputation was certainly assured after this little display of prowess, and, at the very least, General Catalonia would be pleased that his newest choice of poster-child was that much more media-friendly.

 

Treize blinked as a second, and then a third, old-style Aries vaporised under Zechs’s fire, realising suddenly that the younger man might be about to really set his reputation in stone from this fight. The first suit he’d destroyed might not be countable because of the assistance from the Leo pilot but the second and third were definitely his alone. When the black-box footage and the reports from this excursion were examined by the Tactical Wing, back as they were at the Chateau de Saint-Germaine-en-Laye Headquarters in Paris, Treize was certain that the blond would be credited with the two kills. Given that five would make him the official definition of an ‘ace’ and ten would garner him the same title from his fellow pilots, two in one day was a far from shabby performance.

 

And he was staring at his adopted brother again, rather than at the battlefield as a whole, he realised as his suit rang with the warning vibrations of incoming fire. Letting his Aries take damage because he was goggling at Zechs like a silly star-struck fan boy was hardly in keeping with the impression he wanted to be giving!

 

Forcing his gaze away from the younger pilot a second time, he pivoted his suit to focus solely on the oddity that had distracted him across the far side of the base – and promptly swore softly and fluidly.

 

In the chaos that the Specials assault had rendered the Alliance station to, one of the renegade pilots, apparently smarter and more traitorous than his cohorts, had decided this was a fight that wasn’t for him and begun trying to slip away. He was moving cautiously, trying to not to attract the very attention he already had from Treize, and in another minute would be clear of the perimeter of the base and out into the empty, scrubby fields and woodland separating the base from the outskirts of Auckland proper.

 

Allowing a known rebel combatant access to a civilian population centre was not precisely in Treize’s job description. Allowing a known rebel combatant still armed with an Aries access to the prestigious region of Auckland he would encounter first would probably be enough to get the young Commander hung, drawn and quartered by his Uncle Catalonia, if only for making the older man listen to all the resultant whining from the moneyed celebrity figures that lived in the district.

 

Keying his controls with nimble fingers, Treize sent off a tight, high speed communiqué to the Alliance HQ, warning them of the danger and asking them to begin passing that warning to anyone in the area they were bothered about. He received a reply in seconds, a list of critical figures in range, along with express instructions to protect them.

 

Sighing softly, Treize flagged the escaping suit to Zechs, intending to follow it with instructions to change the focus of the operation, and got a response he could never have predicted if his life had depended on it.

 

Zechs broke away from the Aries he was harrying so fast that Treize doubted he’d had time to read the whole communiqué and leapt into the air with his thrusters on full to follow the absconding suit into the woodland.

 

“Trying to escape, hmm?” he said over the radio, his voice tight with coiled tension in a way Treize had never heard from him before. “I don’t think so! I’ll leave the rest to you, Commander!”

 

He was out of visual range before Treize had chance to reply, leaving him only time to yell, “Zechs!” in anger and sudden worry before the younger man’s suit was gone completely, hidden by the sun-scorched trees.

 

The warning vibrations of fire rattled Treize’s Aries again and, abruptly without his Wingman, his command suddenly without a key link in its chain, he had no choice but to abandon all thought of his friend and protégé to concentrate.

 

It didn’t stop him having one last thought about the blond – a thought that was an equal mix of ‘God damn him!’ and ‘God, keep him safe!’

 

 

************************

 

  _Mid July AC 191_

_ Zechs’s Aries – Over the Darlian Estate, Auckland _

Zechs’s heart was pounding in his chest, his breath coming in fast, ragged pants, his eyes narrowed behind his dark glasses as he focused through a surge of adrenaline like nothing he’d ever felt before. He was fixed on the fleeing Aries, running it to ground like a rabid hound after a fox, pushing his newer suit to the limit to make up the ground the other pilot had gained before Zechs had known he was there to pursue.

 

The nerve of the rebel pilot, trying to run from a battle he had instigated because the odds were suddenly not in his favour! He didn’t even seem to have enough honour to warn his comrades of his intentions, so that they might fall back as well. Zechs had been warned that the enemies he would face in field would often be lacking, but he hadn’t expected so clear an example of it on his very first mission!

 

And, why had he thought this would be hard? Zechs had fretted and worried for weeks at a time over whether, when it came to it, he’d be able to do the job he was training for. The first time, before he joined the Academy, he had consoled himself with the notion that he could always quit if he hated it – Treize would never have minded, he hadn’t been keen on the idea of his friend joining in the first place. Later, as his training progressed, there had always been the thought that there was still more training to come, that he hadn’t yet been taught the trick that let Treize and Valadin and Larkspur and all the other Officers remain so serene all the time.

 

These last few weeks though, as the Wing readied itself for deployment, Zechs had been left with unnerving certainty that there was no trick, no training that would help him cope. It was down to the pilot to find the way for themselves, and that had worried him greatly. Committed as he was to his goals, he hadn’t known whether he could actually pull the trigger on another human being, bloodying himself and going against his family’s most cherished beliefs.

 

But, thrown into the midst of a firefight, with the adrenaline making his body sing and his suit purring under his hands, he’d found he hadn’t even stopped to think about what he was doing. Just as it had been in the Academy, his mind had locked onto the targets flashing across his view screen and he’d fired to destroy as efficiently as possible. By the time he had thought, the rebel pilots were firing back, endangering both Zechs himself, the pilots under his command and Treize, and an entirely different set of impulses had kicked in for him, driving him still further.

 

It was enough to make him a little giddy, a little high, and, as the rebel pilot clumsily crash-landed his old and battered Aries in the edges of the scrubby forest, Zechs began to laugh softly. He watched like a hovering hawk as the other pilot scrambled from his downed suit, seeing that the man was talking and cursing to himself without being able to tell what he was saying. Zechs followed him with his thrusters cut to minimum, leisurely running him to ground somewhere he could close him in and demand his surrender.

 

The girl appeared from nowhere – and the enemy pilot took advantage of her so fast Zechs didn’t even see it coming. From one second to the next, the girl was there, the rebel’s arm around her fragile throat, his heavy gun to her pretty, blonde head, her cries shrill in Zechs’s pick-up. Cursing himself for being clumsy enough to let something like this happen, Zechs began manoeuvring his Aries for some kind of opening, and succeeded only in making the other pilot aware he was being followed.

 

“Damnit!” the man shouted, tightening his grip on the gun. “Don’t move!”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow at the poor instruction but complied slowly, bringing his suit in for a graceful landing on the grass.

 

Before he could complete the move, the other pilot spoke again. “You move one inch more than I tell you to and I’ll kill the Darlian girl! Now, get outta that suit!”

 

_Darlian!_ The name rang in Zechs’s head, echoing dolefully. There was only one famous Darlian in the world; there had been only one famous Darlian in the world for longer than Zechs had been alive, a man Zechs had met only once, but who had apparently been a great personal friend of his mother, Queen Katerina of Sanc.

 

Vice-Foreign Minister for the Alliance, John Darlian was forever bleating on about fair terms for the colonies, equality and independence of government. Zechs, personally, thought the man an idiot, agreeing with his foster brother that a colony was called a colony for a reason, and that creating one or more independent branches of humanity in orbit around the planet would be safe only as long as the man-made worlds functioned properly and produced everything that was wanted or needed. Jealousy was a powerful incitement to violence – survival a more potent one still. The moment living conditions on Earth noticeably outclassed those on the colonies, there would trouble, with every colonial born demanding Earth bail them out, at gunpoint if necessary.

 

There were already rumbles and resentments along those lines from some of the poorer sectors and an empty gesture like a Declaration of Independence would do nothing to settle that down. The solution – at least according to Treize and others who thought like him – was exactly the opposite of the Alliance’s stance. The colonies needed to be brought closer into the fold, control of them returned entirely to their founding nations, and then those nations needed to be forced to maintain them as they would their homelands, for fear of having them taken away and handed to another, more deserving sponsor.

 

It was Treize’s intention to see that goal fulfilled, before it was too late – a goal that, in part, was the reason Zechs had joined the Specials, the surest path he’d been able to see to the stable, lasting Peace his family had wanted so badly.

 

A moment after he thought all this, his mind blanked and his body froze. _Darlian…?_ he thought reflexively, looking at the struggling girl again in a new light. “…Could it be…Relena?!”

 

He stared through the camera feeds, studying the girl, taking in her pretty, heart-shaped face and thick, honey-blonde hair. Zechs had no photos of his mother save those in his memory, but he thought the girl in front of him bore her some resemblance. John Darlian had definitely been at the Palace that night, had definitely been trying to get Zechs and Relena clear. Zechs, frightened and traumatised, had obeyed his dead mother’s last words and run out into the City, hiding in every corner and cranny he could until Treize’s father had tracked him down and taken him to safety in Moscow. Relena, Zechs’s precious baby sister, had been too young to do the same, and Zechs had last seen her in the arms of Darlian, screaming her head off as her older brother abandoned her.

 

But he’d never thought Darlian would keep her! The brass nerve of the man took Zechs’s breath away.

 

Knowing now he had no choice, Zechs climbed from his cockpit and walked slowly towards the rebel and his prisoner, his hands raised and his breath coming in rasps. The girl looked at him pleadingly as he approached, although she never stopped fighting her captor’s hold.

 

The rebel snickered as he moved, taunting him, “The latest model Aries. What a great souvenir!” but Zechs barely heard him, paying just enough attention to pull his gun and fire it. The bullet sliced neatly through the rebel’s hand, making him release his hostage automatically, and Zechs warned him away menacingly before turning all his focus to the girl standing in front of him.

 

Despite the shock she’d just had, her chin was raised, her childish face set in determination, and the moment their eyes met, Zechs knew for certain who she was.  The summer blue gaze locked with his was exactly the same as the one that stared back at him from his mirror each morning. This was the baby he had held so carefully, the toddler who had followed him everywhere, only to fall on her unsteady legs as she reached for him, over and over again. _Oh, my sister…_ he sighed internally, his thoughts blurring with grief and longing and pure delight. _You’ve grown so much, Relena!_


	18. Chapter 18

_ Mid July AC 191 _

_ Transport Plane ZW -01 – Pacific Ocean _

 

 

“ _Princess? If I’m a Princess, what are you? A knight on a terrible Dragon?”_

 

“ _Heh. I’m a Prince of the Stars!”_

 

The words, the first he had exchanged with his sister in ten years, kept echoing through Zechs’s mind, ringing in his ears until he thought he might go deaf from them. He should have known she wouldn’t remember him – she’d been so, so very young when their home was destroyed – but that didn’t stop it hurting. His last living family, and she had no idea who he was, even when he called them both by the titles their mother had used as she sang them to sleep each night. Katerina had always turned the lights off on her children by kissing them on the forehead and calling them her Princess of Peace and her Prince of the Stars.

 

The bitterness of the encounter was sloshing in his head, swilling though him dizzyingly. He needed to leave the cockpit of his Aries but he, somehow, couldn’t make himself reach for the seat restraint to release it.

 

He wondered how long he would have sat there in the end if the adrenaline leaving his body hadn’t been followed by grinding waves of nausea. From one heartbeat to the next, his breath shortened and his throat closed, leaving him scrabbling for the catch on his seatbelt, and then the switch for the Aries hatch.

 

He caught the hoist line roughly, dropped towards the hanger deck at speed and bolted for the crew hatch as soon as his feet made contact, keeping his pace just a hair less than a run until he was sure he was out of sight of the other returning pilots.

 

************

 

On the far side of the hanger, Treize let go of his own hoist line far more smoothly than Zechs had, and began looking around himself at the chaos the hanger had become at the return of the six Aries suits. He was furious, boilingly so, at what had happened during the mission and his posture thrummed with it as he scanned the hanger again, looking for the distinctive silvery hair of his adopted brother.

 

Zechs had returned to the rest of the unit some fifteen minutes after he had departed, with the remains of the broken enemy Aries in the grasp of his suit and not one word of explanation. The sight of him had prompted some ragged cheering from the other pilots, who seemed to be regarding his escapade as some sort of medieval duel of honour, but Treize had only felt his already considerable anger at his friend rise a notch higher at the blatant attitude of disrespect. Zechs had shown a tendency to operate against directives in his time at the Academy but Treize had never thought he’d be selfish and arrogant enough to do so on his first mission under Treize’s command, when that first mission was so very important to them both!

 

The young major scanned the hanger again, looking for his troublesome ward, and most of his fellow pilots had the sense to make themselves as small as possible. Even the mechanics, tending the returned suits, didn’t make direct eye contact with him

 

A flash of red and white gold gave away Zechs’s location, and Treize began striding across the hanger in his direction, snapping, “Dismissed, gentlemen!” at the rest of the pilots without looking at them.

 

Whatever else he’d done that day, Zechs was proving to have enough sense to know Treize was going to be pissed at him. The boy was skittering at only slightly less than a flat out run towards the personnel entrance, scarcely paying attention to his surroundings. He dived through the heavy steel hatch and let it slam behind him.

 

Treize opened it for himself a minute later and let it close in much more sedate fashion, glancing around and quickly concluding that the younger man must have vanished into one of the pilot’s wash rooms located along the narrow corridor separating the hanger from the crew cabins. A half-ajar door told him which one, and Treize followed Zechs into it, closing the door behind himself and twisting the lock to make sure no one else disturbed them.

 

“Lieutenant, I believe you and I need to have words,” he snapped.

 

From somewhere in the depths of the locker room there was a rustle of clothing, the sounds of a uniformed body shifting uneasily. Zechs’s voice echoed back a moment later, bouncing off the privacy screens of the toilet cubicles and the two little showers.

 

“Sir…” he said breathlessly. “Would you bear with me… a few seconds, please…? I don’t… feel very well.”

 

Treize narrowed his eyes, pinning down Zechs’s exact location by the sound of his voice. “And I don’t care,” he replied. His boot heels made a hollow clicking sound on the cold industrial flooring as he paced the length of the room and came to a stop by the last of the toilet cubicles. One hand settled on his hip as Treize observed the younger officer dispassionately.

 

The boy was on his knees in the stall, trademark sunglasses hanging limply from one hand as he used the other to hold his silvery mane of hair out of his way in a loose ponytail at the base of his neck. It was obvious what was going on but Treize couldn’t especially make himself feel any sympathy. “Lieutenant!” he barked.

 

“Give me a minute, Treize, for Christ’s sake!” Zechs retorted harshly. “I’m a little bloody busy right now.” He hunched over further as he spoke, ducking his head as he finished his sentence and retched painfully.

 

Treize looked away reflexively, trying to block out the sound of spattering liquid and the little hurting noises the younger man was making. His eyes fixed on one of the showerheads and he stared at it uselessly, wondering which genius had thought they would ever get used. If a mission left a mobile suit pilot needing to shower too badly to wait until they returned to base, then they were likely also too seriously hurt to even attempt it.

 

He waited until the sounds in the room indicated Zechs had finished being sick, then turned to look at him again, reaching past the younger man to hit the flush button on the toilet.

 

Zechs had dropped from his knees to sit with his back against the siding of the cubicle wearily. He looked up at Treize with watery eyes for a moment as the older man leaned past him and tried to smile gratefully, succeeding only in what looked like a pained grimace.

 

“Are you all right?” Treize asked, standing in the backlight from the overhead fluorescent strips so that Zechs couldn’t make out his expression. The blond could only imagine what the older man was seeing – he was well aware he was slumping as though he was actually hurt, and the bout of nausea couldn’t have helped the impression.

 

There was enough urgency and concern in the Major’s voice that it forced Zechs to pay attention to something other than his own self. He nodded at Treize tiredly.

 

“I’m fine,” he answered honestly. Physically, he was, and there was nothing he could say to his friend about his mental and emotional state. That Relena was still alive was his most deeply held secret, one that no one at all knew, and it had to stay that way. Treize, for all that Zechs trusted him absolutely, was in too deep with the Alliance and with the Romefeller Organisation most European aristocrats belonged to. Any man could break under the right stimulus; Zechs wouldn’t trust his sister’s safety to the whims and favours of either group.

 

Treize went to one knee on the hard floor and caught his arm in gloved fingers. “Are you sure?” he demanded roughly, shaking him a little.

 

“Certain.” Zechs freed himself and pulled his body upright. “Just… tired,” he explained weakly.

 

“Tired?” Treize repeated shortly. The concern that had edged into his voice in the past few seconds was fading away again into something that looked and sounded a lot closer to the anger he’d opened with. “You aren’t entitled to be tired, Zechs,” he snapped. “You’re an officer – you have a role to play!” He raised a cold eyebrow. “Not that you showed much awareness of that out there!” he hissed, gesturing to the door and meaning the world at large.

 

Zechs blinked, caught off guard. “Sorry?” he asked blankly.

 

Treize glared, his eyes hard and merciless. “Your little vanishing act, Lieutenant! Do you have any idea how that looks and what danger you put your unit in? What in hell made you take off like that on your own?” he snarled.

 

Zechs’s eyes widened in surprise, realising Treize was entirely serious in his questioning. “I… don’t know, sir,” he answered truthfully. “I saw him getting away and just… reacted.”

 

He pushed himself shakily to his feet as he spoke, stepping past Treize to brace himself against one of the sinks and turn the water on clumsily. He put his hands under the flow, washing away the blackened traces of the gunpowder from firing his gun at the rebel and recalling in staggering clarity how the realisation of those marks on his hands had driven home the truth of what he’d just done that day. He’d been right not to touch his sister – he’d never, now, be fit to touch her again.

 

The thought triggered a new wave of nausea and he caught his breath as he fought it, soaking the cuffs of his jacket as he did so without noticing. He bent a moment later, splashing the water into his face and running his fingers back through his hair before rinsing his mouth out and spitting in an attempt to wash away the taste and pull himself together.

 

Treize watched him do it all dispassionately. “You ‘don’t know’?” he asked acerbically. “You actually expect me to accept that as your report?” He shook his head. “Where’s your head at, Zechs? Can you tell me that? Because it sure as hell isn’t where it ought to be! You just put your life, mine, and those of every pilot in your Squadron in immediate danger by haring off on your own!”

 

The younger man stiffened at the words, turning around to lean back against the sink wearily and look at his commander in confusion. “Danger?” he asked, puzzled. “I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. There was no danger as far as I could see. We’d shredded the rebels long before I left,” he said, scowling. “It was a barrel-shoot down there. I’ve run computer simulations that were harder!”

 

“Of course you have!” Treize snarled back, his face darkening as he stepped closer to his friend. “That would be the point of them! That doesn’t change the fact that you left me alone without my wingman in the middle of a firefight, left your unit without their commander! This isn’t the Academy anymore, Lieutenant, and you are not a child!” he hissed. “You will not score extra points for ‘creative flair’ by endangering the men and women who trust you with their lives!” He shook his head. “What if my comm. line had failed?” he demanded coldly. “What if I’d been hit and taken down? What would have happened to the rest of the Squadron? They take their orders from you in combat! They look to you!”

 

Zechs blinked, caught completely off-guard. His thoughts, still half on his encounter with his sister, stuttered and froze at the idea of Treize being hurt, and he opened his mouth only to close it again immediately, unable to find a single word to say.

 

“I trusted you,” Treize continued, his voice and his posture softening as he spoke, and only becoming more deadly for it. “I trained you, and I trusted you. I thought you could do it, handle the promotion beyond your experience. I thought you knew the reality of war intimately enough not to need the seasoning in the ranks you should have had. Perhaps I was wrong,” he said flatly. “We’ll see. One way or another, Lieutenant, you will never again disobey any order, directly or indirectly, as you did today, or I will strip your rank and your commission myself! Get your head focussed on your mission and your duty, or get out of the cockpit and out of my command!”

 

Zechs caught his breath, stunned. “Treize…!” he murmured, shocked to his core.

 

“Sir,” Treize corrected coldly. “Right now, I don’t care to acknowledge you as anything other than a junior officer.”

 

He turned on his heel as soon as Zechs’s expression reflected the impact of that parting shot and let the clang of the metal hatch against its frame echo with finality as he strode from the room.

 

It was Zechs’s cue to go after him, apologising, and the blond knew it, but he didn’t, suddenly, have the strength. His knees went weak and he found himself sliding to a crumpled heap on the cold flooring again as his head span. A sister who didn’t know him, a brother who didn’t want to – Zechs had known the price he was due to pay for his goals would be high, but he’d never thought he would start paying it so swiftly or at such a brutal rate.

 

The plane banked, climbing to reach cruising altitude on its way home but Zechs barely noticed. His eyes burning where he’d pressed them against the arm he had propped on his drawn-up knees, he used the other hand to find the pill case he was never without, opened it, and downed the medication it contained dry. Until it worked, he was useless to the world around him, his thoughts blurring as they raced too fast for him to process and the only thing clear in his mind the sound of Treize’s voice and Relena’s mingling as they addressed him scornfully.

 

 

***************************

 

 

_ Mid July AC 191 _

_ Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base _

 

It had taken Captain Chennault ten hours to put the impromptu party together and less than ten minutes to get it humming into full life. Standing in a corner of the Wardroom – a venue to which he’d been admitted solely because Chennault had co-opted him for his help earlier that afternoon – Otto watched the ebb and flow of the gathering with a small smile on his face.

 

The Cajun second in command had listened to the radio chatter coming from the first Squadron in the middle of the suit hangers, locating himself without fuss or pretence in the one place on base that most of the personnel could find a reason to be, so that they could all hear the details of their Wing’s first sortie.

 

The initial banter between Treize and Zechs had been amusing, Treize’s observations about Zechs’s fighting style inspiring and his angry, worried shout of the younger man’s name downright blood-chilling for Otto. For a moment, he had feared the worst – that the secret only he and Treize knew about the younger man had flared to life and stopped the Pacifist Prince from even so much as defending himself with violence. When the truth had come clear, Otto had found himself smirking with the rest of the Wing, chuckling at Chennault’s dry-toned, “Ah! I knew that one was going to be trouble!”

 

The very moment the success of the mission was confirmed, the Cajun man had begun his preparations, working in stealth with the help of half a dozen others from all over the base, so that the celebrations were kept secret until they were sprung upon the returning pilots. All through the afternoon, as Treize and Lady Une debriefed and reported the first Squadron, as they returned to duty or simply went to bed, Chennault had planned, and his planning had paid off in spades.

 

The sixteen pilots of the first Squadron were being toasted in style over in the main Mess hall – a celebration Chennault had left under the watchful eye of a senior pilot from the third Squadron. The wardroom had been co-opted for another party, one for the senior officers of the Wing, from Treize down to the Logistics Chief.

 

It had started with a purely traditional drinking of the Specials toast, led by the Cajun and directed at Treize, but it had loosened up fairly quickly, aided by the bluesy music Chennault had pouring from the radio in the far corner, the pots of steaming spicy stews he had bubbling away and the liberal quantities of alcohol flowing freely.

 

As the event grew more rowdy and less formal, Otto had started to worry that Treize would balk. Even after seeing the man relaxed in his own home at Christmas, he would never have said his former teacher was easygoing, but the older man seemed just fine with the temporary conversion of his wardroom to a bar in Louisiana. He was slouched comfortably in a chair across the room from Otto, glass in hand, as he chatted to Captain Velásquez and Lady Une cheerfully.

 

The Lady was, perhaps, a half-inch too close to her commander for strict propriety, perched on his chair arm rather than in a seat of her own. They weren’t touching at all but the two inches of daylight between them were half of what made them look suspicious, obviously forced when contact would have been more natural. It was the first time Otto had seen any evidence of the chemistry between Treize and his Equerry that Zechs had been fretting about for weeks.

 

Otto wondered if the sight was responsible for the black clouds Zechs was emitting now. If Treize was being unexpectedly willing for Chennault’s soiree, then Zechs seemed determined to rain on the parade, scowling and sulking from behind his glasses, and behind his glass.

 

He dismissed the thought as quickly as he’d had it. Zechs had been… off… since he’d climbed from the transport plane, his reactions dull and his responses lacklustre. Otto, obviously, hadn’t sat in on the blonde’s mission debriefing but he had hovered outside Une’s office whilst it was conducted and Zechs had looked like a thundercloud when he was done. He’d barely spoken to Otto for the rest of the morning and had fled to his rooms after lunch, claiming tiredness.

 

Otto had gone to wake him for the party, finding it surprisingly difficult to do so. When Zechs did finally rouse, his eyes held the telltale glassiness of sleeping tablets that hadn’t run their course, making a lie of his earlier words and immediately causing Otto to fret. Whatever reaction Zechs had been trying to sleep off, he’d drugged himself heavily to do so, to still be feeling the medication almost seven hours later. Prone to nightmares, had Zechs been afraid of facing the ones the day might have triggered in him? Was that why he was drinking with such steady determination now? From experience, Otto knew his friend didn’t much care for the bourbon Chennault had supplied to go with his Jambalaya and Gumbo supper, but that didn’t seem to be slowing him down too terribly much.

 

In conjunction with the sleeping pills, alcohol wasn’t a good idea, and the quantity of it Zechs was drinking really wasn’t. Otto had tried reminding his friend of that but it wasn’t doing much good.

 

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on perspective – if reason wasn’t working and alcohol was the problem, then Otto only had one sure-fire way of taking the sting out of the day for Zechs. Moving swiftly, he prised the glass from Zechs’s hand, drained it, held the contents in his mouth and then lent in to kiss the blond, swirling the harsh, potent liquor between them.

 

Zechs returned the kiss willingly, taking the bourbon back, but broke it as soon as he’d swallowed. “Don’t, Otto,” he said, mildly enough.

 

Otto smiled at him. “And why not?” he wondered. “This is supposed to be a party, love, and you are today’s conquering hero. Aren’t I supposed to find that hot?”

 

Zechs snorted rudely, dropping his gaze to the floor. “You can find what you like hot but I’m no conquering hero. Ask Treize – he’s barely talking to me.”

 

The smaller man only just kept from rolling his eyes. He should have known. Nothing put Zechs in this kind of mood that didn’t involve Treize. “It won’t last, gorgeous,” he promised. “You know that. He’s only piqued because you upstaged him,” he teased.

 

Zechs didn’t find it funny. He shook his head slowly at the words. “No, he isn’t,” he insisted but offered no explanation. Instead, he waved it away when Otto started to press his point, and then held his hand out for his glass. “Let it go, Otto. I’m in no mood. I’d be no fun and no fit company for you tonight – my head’s not in it at all.”

 

The dark-haired pilot pouted on cue. “Sure I can’t tempt you?” he quizzed plaintively, and won himself only another headshake. “Right. Well, I’ll just have to try harder, then, won’t I, hon?”

 

Otto didn’t wait for Zechs to answer him, knowing already that he would only get another denial. Instead, he scanned the room swiftly, and then crossed it, his eyes fixed on his target as he moved.

 

Stopping behind the older officer he’d been aiming for, he tapped the man lightly on one shoulder and smiled winningly when he turned around. Sea change turquoise eyes the exact colour of the Officer’s jacket fixed on Otto curiously, their expression neutral beneath golden brown eyebrows. “Yes, pilot?” Leander Aristedes asked politely and Otto turned the smile up another notch.

 

“Sorry to interrupt, sir,” he said, pitching to sound young and deferential. “But I think I need your help with something.”

 

He let his eyes slip as he spoke, flicking them just momentarily to fix on Zechs’s slumped figure, and knew the moment Aristedes followed his gaze that he’d played the right card.

 

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've read the warnings, right? Good.

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base_

 

“A touch of insomnia?”

 

The voice echoed through the warm darkness of the room, softly accented and hushed in deference to the lateness of the hour. Zechs half-turned his head to the speaker, glancing away from whatever sight beyond the window had him so captivated, but didn’t answer save to shrug emptily.

 

A moment later, the rustle of crisp bed sheets cut through the quiet hum of Otto’s sleep-heavy breathing and light footsteps marked the speaker climbing from the bed and crossing the room.

 

As the footsteps stopped, strong arms curled around Zechs’s waist and a warm body pressed against his back, heat tangible even through the thick material of the robe he’d thrown over his skin carelessly.

 

“Come back to bed,” the voice murmured into Zechs’s ear. “I can put you to sleep,” the speaker promised, his tone sultry. He brushed his mouth against Zechs’s throat as he spoke, touching the very tip of his tongue to gold-dusted skin in a subtle reminder of other, earlier, more involved activities.

 

Zechs forced a dry laugh, turning to look at Leander Aristedes with mocking eyes. “Is that such a good thing to claim?” he asked coolly, emptily. He returned his gaze to the far side of his window almost immediately and shook his head. “I slept most of the afternoon. I’m not tired.”

 

Aristedes nodded sagely. “Ah,” he agreed mildly. “I thought you looked a little spacey earlier. Sleeping pills?” he asked idly, ghosting his lips across Zechs’s cheek.

 

Zechs abruptly decided he didn’t like the intimacy of that gesture from this near-stranger, and turned his head again to avoid a repeat. His eyes were cold as he looked at the older officer. “Don’t do that,” he instructed quietly.

 

“Do what?” Leander checked, frowning a little. “Kiss you?” He laughed, shaking his head. “I was doing a hell of a lot more than that an hour ago, baby bird, when I had my mouth round your….”

 

“Thank you,” Zechs cut in sharply. “I remember,” he dismissed. He pulled free of the Greek pilot’s hold and began moving across his bedroom, his steps slow and lacking purpose as he tucked his robe around himself more closely. He wiped his fingers across the damp mark Aristedes’ kiss had left on his cheek, banishing the sensation hurriedly.

 

Leander stayed by the window, standing full in the light streaming through it as he raised questioning eyebrows at Zechs’s tone. In the glow, his golden hair and Mediterranean complexion looked exotic, the strength and definition of his body showing under the bed sheet he’d draped around himself when he moved. He was pretty enough, Zechs supposed, and a reasonably talented lover. Certainly, the hour or so he’d spent in bed with Leander and Otto had been no hardship, even if it wasn’t what he’d been planning for his evening.

 

But then, he should have known Otto would make a play for the Greek officer eventually. Aristedes, after all, like Julian Larkspur before him, like half the men Zechs had seen Otto pick up in the clubs, was solidly his classmate’s type, which Zechs himself really wasn’t. He didn’t have the delicate build or the middling height Otto tended towards, he didn’t have the thick, short, warm-toned hair, or the wide, pretty eyes, and he sure as hell didn’t have the easy-going, relaxed personality. He was altogether a colder, more untouchable creature for all that Otto kept telling him he was also more beautiful.

 

Aristedes, it seemed, agreed with him. The older pilot turned as Zechs moved, watching him narrowly for a moment before shaking his head in disgust. “Wow,” he remarked. “Aren’t you a frosty bitch once you’ve come?”

 

Zechs shrugged. “Am I?” he asked, darkly. “I’ve never been told so.”

 

“You will be,” Aristedes answered, “if you insist on being this charming with all your lovers. The angelic, innocent look is going to wear off fast for you in another year or so. Trust me, you’ll need to cultivate some people-skills before then or you’ll be sleeping alone a lot.”

 

“I doubt it,” Zechs replied evenly, before looking over his shoulder at the other man. “And you’re not my lover,” he corrected shortly. He pointed to Otto, sleeping on the far side of the bed. “He’s my lover. You’re just… tonight’s trick.”

 

Leander seemed to baulk a little at being dismissed as nothing more than a one-night stand. Under his impromptu toga, his shoulders straightened as he tensed in annoyance. “Does it hurt being this much of a stereotype, baby bird?” he asked tightly. “Pretty face, pissy attitude. It’s a serious turn-off, you know.”

 

The blond paused for a beat, then laughed cynically and waved an indifferent hand. “You assume I care,” he said. “I’m naturally blond and I give one hell of a blow job. It’s not my attitude men want me for, believe me.”

 

“Did I mention arrogant?” Aristedes added to the air. “Mustn’t forget arrogant!” He snorted rudely, then levelled a glare across the room at the younger man. “What is your problem, Marquise? The whole Ice Prince thing really doesn’t suit you and you weren’t acting like this before.”

 

“Don’t call me that!” Zechs snapped, much as he had at Otto the night before, then sobered as he closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry,” he offered immediately. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s been a long day and I’m feeling a little… fractious,” he confessed.

 

Aristedes smiled winningly, his soft aqua eyes thawing at the apology. “It’s all right,” he granted. “I suppose I should remember today was your first action and make allowances. God knows, I was a mess after mine, and without half your cause.”

 

Zechs blinked. “How so?” he asked curiously, wondering just what the Greek man had meant by Zechs having ‘cause’. Surely, Treize hadn’t let the details of their argument slip to a junior officer?

 

“Because I was a Royal spoiled brat,” Leander replied, grinning suddenly in a way that lit his face up most charmingly. “I’d been pampered, cosseted and deferred to my entire life and the only tough decision I’d had to make had been what to do with myself once an arranged marriage was off the cards. Even Commander Treize couldn’t whip me into shape – did you know he was my Instructor my last year at the Academy?”

 

“Your last year was my first,” Zechs said, nodding, “so I did know, yes.”

 

Aristedes chuckled. “Then you’ll know what a demon for discipline he is,” he continued, confirming Zechs’s sudden suspicion that the Greek pilot had no notion of the personal relationship between Zechs and Treize. “I had none,” he said cheerfully. “At all. Treize practically beat me bloody every day for months and it got him nowhere. It took nearly dying on my first mission before I started taking things seriously. And then I learned how really good I am. Xavi didn’t know where to look. He was my Squad leader back then,” Leander finished.

 

“That explains how you were acting this morning, at least,” Zechs replied, thinking back to the early hours and the briefing in the wardroom. “You confused me very nicely,” he admitted. “I was sure he was straight.”

 

Aristedes smirked, nodding and making his golden hair tumble around his shoulders where it had worked loose from whatever he used to style it day to day. “Oh, as the proverbial ruler,” he replied. “But he’ll stand to be cuddled once in a while. If I ask him nicely,” he added wickedly.

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow, wondering at the mocking tone in the other man’s voice. If Aristedes considered the Don a friend, he had a funny way of showing it because manipulating him into giving affection he wasn’t comfortable with was a horrid thing to do. Zechs tried to imagine doing the same thing to Treize, and found himself a little queasy at the idea. A straight man was just that, straight, and it wasn’t fair to bully them into acting as though they weren’t.

 

Eyeing Aristedes narrowly, Zechs swallowed uncomfortably, unsure of what to say next.

 

He winced immediately at the bad taste in his mouth, the synthetic tang of the condoms they’d used mixing nastily with the chemical sweetness of the flavoured lube Leander had produced from his jacket pocket. His grin had been evil as he’d introduced Zechs and Otto to an activity they’d never thought to try before.

 

Licking his lips in remembrance, Zechs swallowed again, and then shook his head. “Excuse me, will you?” he murmured and turned on his heel to head into his little bathroom.

 

It was the work of a few seconds to brush his teeth and rinse with his mouthwash, replacing the artificially stale taste with the sharp flavour of mint. He took a moment to use the facilities, and then washed his hands and splashed water into his face to counter the grogginess his medication had left in its wake.

 

Leander was sitting in his desk chair when he returned to the main room, his sheet fastened more securely and two glasses of cloudy green absinthe sitting on the desk in front of him.

 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Aristedes offered with a disingenuous smile, “but the bottle on your nightstand made me curious. I’ve never tried it and it seemed fitting given the party Jean-Remy threw tonight.”

 

Zechs shook his head, reaching for the glass nearest to him and picking it up easily. “I don’t mind,” he replied. He sipped at the drink, enjoying the familiar bittersweet taste and noting it mixed well with mint. “Just take it slowly,” he warned. “It’s pretty lethal stuff if you aren’t used to it and you’ll hallucinate if you have too much.”

 

Aristedes grinned, eyebrows raised as he swept his free hand back through his hair to pull it off his forehead for a moment. “Really?” he asked, impressed. “Sounds like fun!”

 

“Occasionally,” Zechs agreed, drinking again. Otto had refused to let him refill his glass after Leander had joined them and the world was getting annoyingly coherent at the edges. Sobriety was not what he wanted tonight. “It has its charms, I’ll admit.”

 

He watched the other man take a first sip of his own drink and waited, anticipating his reaction. He was caught somewhere between pleased and disappointed when the older pilot held the liquid in his mouth for a beat before swallowing with a small frown.

 

“Different,” he commented neutrally, giving no hint as to whether he liked it or not.

 

Zechs nodded. “Most people spit the first mouthful clean across the room and it’s usually an acquired taste even after that. I was told I’m quite unusual for liking it as much as I do,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug.

 

Leander tilted the glass in the low light, watching the milky green liquid obey gravity and flow against one side of the short tumbler. “You’re definitely unusual,” he commented, then looked up curiously, dismissing his comment with a smile. “Who told you?” he asked, his eyes fixing on Zechs’s face in a way that was a little unnerving.

 

Zechs answered the smile with a one shouldered shrug, feeling some of the tension riding him drift away as the absinthe began to hit his bloodstream. He’d eaten very little that day, thrown most of what he had up again on the transport plane, and, combined with the effects of the various pills he’d swallowed, he was rather more susceptible to the effects of the alcohol he was drinking than he would have been otherwise.

 

“Leia,” he replied honestly. “My sister-in-law.” Not that Treize knew about that afternoon – and not that he ever would if Zechs had anything to do with it – but it hadn’t been a bad way to spend a sticky summer day whilst the older man was busy with work and Leia, as Zechs had sort-of known for a while, could be surprisingly good company when she was inclined to be.

 

Leander scowled at the reply. “Your sister-in-law?” he asked doubtfully. “I didn’t think you had a brother?” he quizzed.

 

The comment was odd, as several others had been that evening, but Zechs missed it as he amused himself by giving the Greek man a cryptic glance. “I do. After a fashion,” he added, muddying the waters even further. “You’ve even met him.”

 

Zechs hid the laughter that bubbled up at the expression on the other pilot’s face by tipping his head back and draining his glass nearly dry. A wicked thought occurred to him with his last mouthful and he held it rather than swallowing immediately.

 

Stepping closer to Leander, he bent down and copied Otto’s earlier trick of sharing his drink through a kiss. Aristedes was caught off guard by the move but responded willingly enough, taking the liquid, swallowing and then kissing back with rapidly mounting enthusiasm.

 

They broke apart, panting, a few moments later and Leander licked his lips, looking up at Zechs with sparkling eyes. “You brushed your teeth,” he said. “Cute.”

 

Zechs snorted rudely. “If you say so,” he dismissed.

 

“I do,” the older pilot replied. He tilted his head to one side, then set his glass down on the desk. “And here I thought we were done for the evening.”

 

The offhand comment made Zechs pause for a moment before he shrugged carelessly. “You’re here,” he said, as though that were explanation enough. It was, in a way – certainly, that someone was there, willing and sufficiently pretty was most of his reason for selecting the majority of his partners. “I’m not sober enough to be particularly fussy,” he said, bluntly honest.

 

Leander might have been offended; instead he started to laugh, apparently genuinely amused. “Sugar it, don’t you?” he asked rhetorically.

 

Zechs answered him anyway, some part of him suddenly wondering where this side of himself was coming from. As much as it _was_ the truth, he never normally admitted it – even to himself. To be articulating it to a near-stranger was definitely odd. “Not really,” he said, frowning as he spoke. “Feel free to say no,” he offered, re-establishing at least that much of his usual approach.

 

Aristedes chuckled again, set his own glass down and stood up. “Now, why would I do that?” he asked, and his voice had shifted to the smoky soft tone Zechs had heard from him earlier. Now, as then, the blond found it quite the turn on and yielded willingly when the older officer closed the space between them and set his hands against Zechs’s narrow waist as he leaned in to kiss him again.

 

At sixteen, Zechs was used to his hormones reacting quite readily to any offer of sex but he was still shocked by how quickly and fiercely the heat inside him built to critical. Either Leander really did have the ‘magic touch’ he’d teased Otto with soon into their encounter, or the combination of the drugs in Zechs’s system was alchemical in some way, because his skin suddenly felt like it was paper-thin, every kiss and caress burning straight to his nerves until he was short of breath and dizzy with it.

 

He put a hand out, searching for something to grip for balance and the Greek officer seemed to read his need. Leander’s hands caught him under the elbows and held him, backing him across the room and pressing him into the wall just next to his bathroom door.

 

“Breathe, baby bird,” he said, and his smile was a little cruel at the edges. “The rush’ll pass in a moment and then you’ll feel better than you ever have, I promise.”

 

What? There was something about that, like so many things this evening, that didn’t feel right to Zechs but he suddenly couldn’t hold a thought in his head beyond the physical. He lifted his hands to push Aristedes away, and found himself pulling the other pilot closer roughly, tangling long fingers in thick, honey-coloured hair as he kissed him clumsily and began biting at his throat.

 

“Oh, I should have known you’d turn aggressive,” Leander muttered, tilting his head to let Zechs do as he wanted. “You never were going to be one for weepy sentimentality, were you?”

 

Zechs tried to answer him and couldn’t – the words just wouldn’t form. He’d felt like this before – mind a blank, intellect gone, reacting solely from his gut – a few times but never without cause. He panted helplessly against the other man’s skin, fighting for balance, and didn’t notice that Aristedes was sneaking his hands between their bodies, tugging and loosening the sash of Zechs’s dressing gown, until he felt the shock of the air on his skin.

 

Zechs drew a sharp breath at the unexpected cold, twisting his body to break the other man’s hold on the soft fabric of his robe – or trying to. As much as his mind felt as though it had liquefied, his limbs seemed to have turned to sponge. He had no strength, no feeling and no grip in his fingers at all. He opened his mouth to protest that there was something wrong with him, that he needed to stop for a moment, and managed only a high-pitched whimper of pleasure as the Greek pilot wrapped long, wickedly clever fingers around his erection.

 

And then, suddenly, far from wanting to protest what was happening, it was all Zechs could do to ride the feelings in his body as they built and built. Zechs was a long way from the excitable fourteen year old he’d been when Otto had first touched him this way, but he couldn’t think of anything else that compared. Instead of being familiar, almost comforting, the way being petted and played with usually was, the sensations tearing though Zechs were intense and unsettling, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that the Greek man wasn’t being especially gentle with him.

 

It was over in less than a minute. Zechs distantly felt the back of his head crack off the wall behind him as he shuddered through his climax but the only two things that were real were the smothering hand muffling his sharp cries and the sweeping, staggering pulse of his orgasm.

 

“The Lightning Count for more than one reason, hmm?” Leander mocked, shifting his hand to let Zechs come against his palm rather than generally everywhere, and Zechs would have had no response for him even if he had been able to draw sufficient breath to speak.

 

Aristedes pulled back from Zechs almost before the younger man was done, wiped his hand on his sheet and began tugging at Zechs’s dressing gown roughly. “Turn around, baby bird,” he commanded shortly, dropping the robe and giving Zechs a none-too-gentle shove in the right direction.

 

Zechs, dizzy from the wash of his climax, obeyed automatically. He found himself very quickly facing the wall, almost nose to nose with it as Leander’s body heat teased his skin from behind.

 

The rustle of fabric should have tipped him off, as should the distinctive snick of Leander’s flip-top bottle of lube being opened, but he was too thrown by the way his own body was reacting to pay it any mind. Despite the fact that the room was swirling around him as though he was in free-fall again, despite barely being able to remember his own name, Zechs was certain he’d never felt anything that matched the experience Aristedes had just dragged out of him. If he’d been in a state to care, he might have been insulted at how little effort it had taken the older pilot.

 

Across the room, Otto stirred heavily, shifting in the remains of the bedding for a moment before dropping back into his dreams. He slept like the dead after sex, Zechs had known that for years now, and he wouldn’t wake except for very specific cues.

 

As the blond found a moment of steadiness to contemplate his ex-roommate affectionately, strong fingers closed on his wrists. Zechs jumped, startled by the touch, equilibrium thrown again as Leander leaned into him, guiding the younger pilot to put his left hand flat on the wall in front of him for balance and his right on himself, before gripping his hip hard.

 

Braced, bent slightly forward, Zechs only realised what Aristedes was doing a fraction of a second before cool, slick fingertips touched the opening to his body firmly. He gasped, shocked, tensing against the contact instinctively, and won himself a soft laugh and a momentary pause.

 

“Marquise?” Aristedes asked, his voice just a shade breathless. “Tell me you’ve been topped before?” he demanded.

 

Too out of his own head to lie, Zechs nodded a confirmation immediately, then struggled to form the words to clarify the point. He had been, yes, and recently, by Otto the night before, but that didn’t mean he was willing for Aristedes to do the same thing now. For one thing, the dizzying, spinning sensations flaring along his skin were strengthening to the point of the unpleasant, leaving him feeling truly breathless and a little queasy, and he rather wanted to go and lie down more than anything else. For another, Otto was the only person ever to have topped him, and Zechs had intended keeping it that way for quite some time to come.

 

Leander didn’t give him the time to force the words though his sluggish brain, though. Scarcely waiting for Zechs to nod, he laughed softly and pressed his fingers in deep.

 

He wasn’t rough – if anything, he was being commendably careful – but neither did he know the difficulties Zechs had with opening himself this way. The Greek pilot was handling the younger blond much as Zechs had learned to handle the men he went this far with in the clubs – considerately but with the assumption that they were experienced, relaxed and willing.

 

He knew what he was doing; that much had been obvious with Otto earlier and it was obvious now. His touch was sure and certain, unerringly tripping nerve-endings until Zechs was panting all over again, his body reacting more quickly than he’d thought it capable of.

 

The blond had another clear moment as Leander stepped back from him for a beat, taking his hand away to reach for his lube again and giving Zechs a space without the overwhelming stimulation. Zechs gasped for air in the warmth of the room, fighting himself for coherency, and lost all hope of it when the Greek officer moved close again.

 

His mouth was hot and a little wet on the back of Zechs’s shoulder as he dropped open-mouthed kisses on bare skin before tightening his grip on the younger man once more. Zechs had another, final, split-second where he might have moved away or said no but it was gone before he could gather the wit or the will-power, and then Leander was pressing into him steadily.

 

It couldn’t have been easy for him. Zechs knew he was tensing against the other man, despite also knowing it was the last thing he should be doing. Aristedes pulled back a touch, moved again, then exhaled shortly, breath hissing between his teeth.

 

“Christ, Marquise!” the older man managed, his voice strained, betraying him. “Give a little, will you? Deep breaths,” he ordered roughly. “Relax.”

 

Easier said than done, as Zechs had found out in the past, but he tried to obey the other pilot. If they were going to do this – and it seemed they were, his idea or not – then it might as well feel good. Accordingly, he gathered what shreds remained of his concentration, began taking faster, shallower breaths to force his body to yield and pushed back against the other pilot carefully.

 

It hurt, but that didn’t distract Zechs for long, and then everything after that disappeared into a haze of movement and staggering pleasure. Balance and composure deserted him again at the feel of Leander’s body in his, the Greek man’s hand around Zechs’s renewed erection and stroking him just as he had a few minutes before.

 

It wasn’t over quite as quickly as it had been the first time, but it wasn’t very far off. Driving into him hard, his free hand tight into the hair at the back of Zechs’s neck as he held him in place against the wall, Aristedes tensed suddenly, bit down on Zechs’s shoulder and spilled inside him in a flood of warmth that felt fantastic.

 

He went still for a bare few seconds, then chuckled and sighed contentedly as he leaned into the younger blond and began to whisper into his ear. His words were a running litany of absolutely filthy suggestions, half of it couched in phrasing Zechs would have blushed scarlet to use himself, but it worked like a charm. In combination with everything else, Zechs was left reeling and he came with a sharp cry.

 

He was so caught in the stunning flood of sensation that he almost missed the last words Aristedes whispered into his ear but there was something about his triumphant, condescending tone that snatched at Zechs’s attention, forcing the blond to register what he wouldn’t have otherwise.

 

It was fortunate that was the case; Leander’s words made Zechs turn icily cold, spinning in horror as he heard them again in his mind.

 

“I know who you are…. _Your Majesty_.”

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base_

 

The sight and smell of the medical wing was unpleasant at the best of times. To Zechs, for whom the next evening was a very long way from that best, it was nigh-on unbearable, doing nothing to help his pounding head at all whilst contributing quite nicely to the nausea he’d been fighting all day.

 

Leander Aristedes had shocked and frightened the life out of Zechs the night before, blithely announcing to the strung-out and overwrought younger pilot that he knew his true identity. He’d done so in the haze of a false intimacy created from an encounter between the two of them Zechs had never really wanted in the first place, perhaps seeking to soften the blow, and then been horrified at how quickly Zechs had turned on him, demanding explanations for the statement interspersed with wild denials.

 

His only justification, given when Zechs had pulled his service pistol from its holster for the second time that day, had been, “But how could I not?” He was, he'd explained, European Royalty, just as Zechs was, and scarcely more than a year older. Of course he’d heard of the Peacecraft’s eldest child in his younger years – he’d fully expected to be attending school with the boy at some point in the future!

 

That explanation hadn’t held water for Zechs at the time, and it still didn’t now. Frightened, physically shaken by everything that had happened and barely holding his composure together by a hair, the blond had unceremoniously thrown the older pilot from his rooms, threatening dire consequences if he said anything to anyone else, and promptly woken the sleeping Otto to relay the whole story to him breathlessly.

 

Otto’s suggestion had been to find, wake and tell Treize, until Zechs had reminded his friend that Treize was mad at the blond for his behaviour on their shared mission earlier that day – and until Zechs had confessed to everything else that had happened whilst the dark-haired boy was sleeping. Then his suggestion had been for Zechs to take a few deep breaths, drink the glass of water Otto had fetched for him, and then get dressed and accompany him on a nice evening stroll across the base to see a doctor.

 

Zechs had refused the suggestion stridently, lost as to why Otto thought it necessary and not realising, in his addled state, that his lack of understanding was half the reason the smaller pilot was so insistent. Otto had decided quite swiftly that something in the combination of alcohol and medication Zechs had fed himself that day had reacted badly, causing his behaviour to swing wildly from the norm into precarious suggestibility and downright dangerous carelessness. He was clearly very worried about the blond and obviously not happy when, adrenaline deserting him as quickly as it had arrived and the depression of earlier in the day taking hold again at the reminder of his argument with Treize, Zechs had refused all suggestions of going anywhere in favour of curling under his sheets and pretending to be asleep.

 

He’d been even less happy the next morning, when Zechs had woken from the doze he’d finally slipped into red-eyed and suffering the hangover from hell. He’d nagged his friend half to death for over an hour, alternating between berating him for the state he’d gotten himself into and repeating his insistence that he needed to speak to someone. Zechs had finally thrown him out as well, and then set about somehow preparing himself to get through the rest of the day.

 

He’d accomplished that task mainly by hiding in his office with the blinds drawn and the air-conditioning set to maximum, downing handfuls of painkillers as often as was safe and nursing his stomach into accepting sips of water between necessary dashes to the restroom down the corridor. His paperwork had seemed even more interminable than it normally did but Zechs, for once, had been grateful for its distraction.

 

When dinnertime arrived, though, and Zechs still didn’t feel any better than he had that morning, he was forced into admitting to himself that Otto might have been onto something and he’d made the walk to the med wing reluctantly, not looking forward at all to having to relay everything that had happened the night before to some random doctor.

 

The absolute last person he expected or wanted to run into in the med wing was Treize. The sight of the older man’s tall, perfectly turned out figure approaching from the opposite direction as a nurse led Zechs towards the treatment areas made the blond cringe. Not only did he not think he and Treize were especially on good terms after the day before but Zechs’s own appearance left something to be desired. He’d cut corners that morning anyway and the rest of his day had combined to leave him looking a little ragged and rumpled. Anyone else would have forgiven him, particularly since he was technically off-duty now anyway, but not Treize.

 

The nurse gestured to a little curtained-off cubicle – a square section of floor space with a medical couch in it and a cabinet and not much more – and told him to make himself comfortable before turning away. Zechs nodded, continuing towards the cubicle alone, his eyes and his attention on Treize rather than anything else around him.

 

He didn’t think Treize had seen him yet but, as the older man drew near, his concentration on a slip of heavy paper being held in his hand, Zechs drew himself to attention and prepared himself for the inevitable lecture.

 

It didn’t come. Treize, never looking up, almost walked directly into the younger man, forcing Zechs to skitter back out of his path to avoid the collision, bumping into the side of the couch in the process and making the little cabinet rattle with a metallic clatter.

 

The flurry of motion and sound finally got the older man to pay heed to his surroundings. Stopping almost mid-step, he looked up and around himself, blinking in confusion when he registered Zechs’s presence a few paces away, and then frowning delicately as he put together the pieces of what must have happened.

 

“I’m sorry,” Treize said softly, the words clearly automatic. “I didn’t see you there.”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow curiously but shook his head, dismissing the apology. “Obviously, sir,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

Treize nodded in response, turned to move away again, and then turned back, looking over the younger man in silence, seeming for all the world as though he were trying to say something but wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase it.

 

There was an awkward silence between them as they stared at one another, and then Treize appeared to register the way Zechs looked at about the same moment Zechs remembered just where he was and began wondering why Treize would be visiting it too.

 

“Sir…” Zechs started awkwardly. “Is everything…?”

 

Treize interrupted him. “You look dreadful!” he exclaimed simultaneously. “Zechs, what…?”

 

They both stopped, looked at each other again, and felt the tension break. Zechs smiled weakly as Treize looked at the ceiling for a moment and chuckled.

 

“That bordered on the ridiculous,” he said softly. “You first,” he offered, gesturing with his free hand that the younger man should ask his questions without interruption.

 

Zechs immediately shook his head. “No, please,” he said. “What were you going to say?”

 

Treize took a step forward, tilting his head to one side as he looked at the younger man intently. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he answered. “I was going to ask if you’re feeling well. You look shocking,” he pointed out, frowning tightly.

 

“About how I feel, then,” the younger man replied honestly. He shrugged roughly, his expression rueful. “It’s self-inflicted, mostly. I didn’t have a great evening.”

 

Treize blinked at the explanation, then glanced away for a moment. “I know the feeling,” he said, almost under his breath, before looking back at the other man and gesturing towards the personnel loitering behind a sweeping desk across the room. “The medics won’t do much for a hangover,” he warned. “It’s something of an unwritten regulation, unless it’s critical for a mission. We have too many unsupervised adolescents on the books for anything else.”

 

“I know,” Zechs said. “And if I thought I was just the worse for drinking, I wouldn’t be here.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I wasn’t being entirely flippant when I said my evening didn’t go entirely to plan. Between Otto and Leander…”

 

“Leander?” Treize cut in, confused for a moment as he frowned at his friend. “Who’s Lean…?” he started to ask, and then stopped himself as the light dawned. “Ah.” He smiled knowingly. “Lieutenant Aristedes. I wondered how long that would take,” he said slyly.

 

Zechs frowned at his friend. “How long what would take?” he asked, before he understood. He frowned more when he did. “Oh. You were expecting me to bed him, then?” he asked, and he could here the first shades of annoyance in his own voice.

 

Treize shrugged, seeming to miss the warning signs. “It seemed likely,” he admitted conversationally. “I was actually hoping you and he would have enough in common to become friends, but having seen you with Otto, I was rather presuming you’d end up sleeping with him.” He paused briefly. “You would have been, you know,” he said cryptically.

 

“Would have been what?” Zechs asked, his frown becoming a definite scowl as he wondered whether he should be insulted or not.

 

“Friends. Or,” Treize clarified, “at least acquaintances. If things had been… different, that is. There aren’t all that many people of your age in that, ah, particular social class,” he explained carefully. “Lieutenant Aristedes is one of the few, so you’d certainly have known him, if nothing else.” He gestured fluidly, dismissively. “It’s likely, actually, that if you’d both still turned out gay, your families would have been talking about a formal contract between the two of you by now.”

 

Zechs’s scowl set hard, becoming thunderous as he narrowed his eyes. “So you thought… what?” he demanded, trying to keep the well of anger he was feeling under wraps and out of his voice. “You’d give me back some part of the life I should have had?”

 

Treize shrugged lightly. “Nothing so structured,” he demurred, “but yes, something like that.” He seemed to finally register Zechs’s surly expression. “I’ll beg you to pardon me if you resent the attempt, Zechs,” he said, “but it was made in your best interests. Aristedes is the closest thing to a true peer you have. I thought the exposure might be of benefit to you.”

 

Zechs hissed between his teeth, still fighting to keep a lid on his temper. Things were too fragile between himself and the older man at the moment for him to want to risk a screaming row, but, oh, it was tempting. “How so?” he asked tightly. “Otto not blue-blooded enough for you now?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Zechs,” Treize countered shortly. “I happen to think you need more companionship than just Mr Maxillian, that’s all. Aside from anything else, it’s bad for your career to be so isolationist,” he warned gravely. “Aristedes is just an example of that. Cultivate him as a friend now and he might be useful to you in the future,” Treize advised. “He’s an ace pilot in precisely the areas that you, yourself are weakest. Ignore him, however, and, for exactly the same reason, he could well become the rival that dogs your every step. One way or another, the two of you are so close in age and basic ability that, barring something unfortunate happening, you’ll be dealing with each other for your entire time in the Specials.”

 

Zechs raised a mocking eyebrow. “How very politically savvy of you, sir,” he replied disdainfully.

 

Treize’s eyes flashed with something very much like the first rumblings of his own considerable temper. “Of course,” he fired back, his voice clipped. “That would be my job, Lieutenant. I needed a Squadron Leader for my Marine unit and Aristedes was both available and an acknowledged expert in the area. If he happens to be a useful contact for us both, then so much the better, and if he also happens to be a pleasant young man that might serve as a friend for you, even better still!”

 

Zechs felt his hands clench into fists at his sides, wondering wildly if Treize really had any notion about how condescending that statement was. “I can choose my own friends, Treize!” he snapped hotly. “And do a better job of it! My choices, at least, don’t threaten my health and safety the first chance they get!”

 

He shook his head before Treize could reply, registering the surprise on his friend’s features but not giving the older man time to voice it. “There was a flaw in your oh, so clever plan, Commander!” he bit off. “Your ‘pleasant young man’ knows who I really am!”

 

The blond wasn’t sure what reaction he was expecting – shock or surprise or somesuch, he supposed – but it certainly wasn’t for Treize to lift one cold eyebrow and shrug narrowly. “Of course he does, Zechs,” the older man answered coolly. “So what? I don’t for one moment believe Aristedes will betray you,” he added curtly. “My family weren’t the only ones outraged by what happened.”

 

Zechs choked. “What?” he spluttered. “Oh, my God! How could you be so cavalier?” he demanded, all restraint on his temper abandoning him in his shock. “Treize, if you’re wrong….!”

 

“I’m not,” Treize countered repressingly.

 

“You’d better hope so!” Zechs flared hotly. “Because, God knows, Aristedes was certainly eager to spill what he knew to me when he had me up against my bedroom wall last night!” he spat.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Treize asked, his voice deathly quiet. He customarily shielded his easily-bruised sensibilities behind overly formal courtesy but Zechs didn’t think that was what he was doing this time, despite how he’d blanched at the blonde’s description. The expression in Treize’s eyes suggested he was asking the question for entirely other reasons, daring the younger man to continue speaking to him in the same tone of voice.

 

Unfortunately, Zechs had never been one to back down from a challenge. “You heard,” he answered the redhead shortly. “He got me half off my head on absinthe, pinned me up against the wall in my room and screwed me blind. Felt great at the time,” he elaborated viciously. “Not so much the moment he called me ‘Your Majesty’!”

 

Treize’s hands tightened at his sides, jolting reflexively in a movement he aborted. His fingers were crushing the paper he was holding in them and his face was closed, his eyes flashing with sudden, burning anger. “I warned you yesterday, Lieutenant,” he said icily. “This isn’t the Academy anymore and I am your commanding officer before I am anything else! You will be careful in how you speak to me!”

 

There was a moment of weighted silence, then Zechs laughed a little, emptily. “Careful?” he repeated darkly. “Oh, absolutely, sir. Someone should be.” He shook his head. “Careful,” he said again. “That wouldn’t be why I’m here at all, would it?” he asked bitterly.

 

He shook his head again a heartbeat later and turned on his heel to hop up on the couch, intending to lie down before he fell. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, his tone levelling into perfect military correctness as Treize glared at his spine for the mockery.

 

Zechs had barely gotten his foot on the little step before Treize caught his arm in a bruising grip and hauled him to a halt roughly. “Explain!” the older man ordered sharply, pulling Zechs back around to face him.

 

Zechs’s aching head immediately protested the brusque treatment, stabbing pain shooting behind his eyes as his equilibrium wavered precariously. He blinked rapidly, fighting himself as best he could. “Whoa!” he spluttered as the room reeled. “Don’t do that!”

 

In direct contradiction to Zechs’s instructions, Treize’s grip only tightened, his gaze stayed firmly on Zechs’s face, fierce and focussed. “Explain!” he repeated harshly. “What did you mean by that?” he snapped.

 

Zechs returned the gaze just as intensely, glaring suddenly as his own temper flared again and well beyond his tattered control. “What the fuck do you think I mean?” he snapped. “Your precious Aristedes has a taste for doing things wet, sir!” he taunted viciously. “Still think I should trust him?”

 

He staggered a moment later, his balance skittering dizzyingly as pain flared across his cheekbone to match that in his head. It was the second time in less than six months Treize had slapped him, disciplining him like an errant child, but that didn’t make the shock of it lessen. If anything, it made it worse.

 

Pressing one hand to the rapidly heating mark on his face, Zechs stared at the older man in betrayal, his flash of temper deserting him as quickly as it had arrived. What had he done to deserve such rough treatment from his friend? If he was being ill-tempered with the older man, it was only because he was feeling so very badly out of sorts, shaken and sickened by everything that happened in the last twenty four hours. Shouldn’t that have been obvious? Even Aristedes had said he should have expected Zechs to be a little thrown by yesterday’s first combat sortie.

 

Apparently, it wasn’t obvious – or Treize just didn’t care. His eyes narrowed as he pinned the younger man in place with a single look. “I’d thought you’d disappointed me yesterday,” he said coldly, “as much as you ever could have. It seems I was wrong.” He shook his head. “I’d never have thought you capable of such stupidity,” he said flatly, then turned sharply on his heel and marched away.

 

Zechs watched him go blankly, so stunned by Treize’s words that he couldn’t even begin to respond, much less find the words to call the older man so he could explain what had really happened, that he hadn’t been that stupid, that he’d had no choice.

 

It was the third time in a day that he’d felt so disconnected – the first time in the plane and the second in his rooms with Aristedes – and it took him a moment to notice that the nurse who’d shown him to his cubicle had hurried over to his side as soon as Treize had moved away, drawn by the commotion.

 

The woman’s hands were gentle as they encouraged Zechs up onto the couch, her voice soothing as she spoke to him quietly.

 

“I’m sorry about the delay, Lieutenant,” she said softly, her eyes showing the sympathy she was otherwise restrained from expressing. “How can we help you this evening?”

 

 

*****************

 

 

The look on Treize’s face when he answered Zechs’s determined knocking an hour later suggested his temper hadn’t cooled overly much for the time that had passed. From his steely gaze and tight posture, the blond was guessing he had a matter of seconds before Treize slammed the door closed in his face, possibly permanently.

 

Fortunately, it took him only a fraction of that time to blurt the words that had been on the end of his tongue since Treize had stormed from the medical bay, and then stand motionless to see if Treize would acknowledge what he was saying or not.

 

“It wasn’t my idea!” Zechs gasped breathlessly.

 

“I beg your pardon?” Treize asked politely. The older man’s expression hadn’t shifted much but the door was still open and he’d at least spoken to his friend.

 

“Last night,” Zechs explained hurriedly. “With Aristedes – it wasn’t my idea.” He bit his lip. “I’m honestly not that stupid,” he insisted. “I’m not.”

 

Treize raised an eyebrow. “I had hoped not but you seem determined to prove otherwise.” He shifted his stance, letting go of his door and folding his arms across his chest. “What do you want, Zechs?” he asked, and he sounded utterly weary. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not in the mood for playing guidance counsellor tonight. Could Otto not help you?”

 

Zechs blinked, trying to not to let himself feel hurt at that. “Otto already knows what happened, Treize,” he said as levelly as he could manage. “He was there. That’s not what I wanted anyway,” he added, hoping the lie wasn’t too terribly obvious. “I just wanted to explain.” He needed Treize’s company this evening, and if he had to lie to get it, then so be it.

 

The second eyebrow joined the first. “And you have. I believe you,” Treize agreed blandly. “Now, go and get some rest.” He pushed away from the doorframe and took a step back, clearly readying himself to return to the shadows of his room and close the door to the world outside for the night. “I’ll meet you in the morning for breakfast,” he suggested.

 

Almost a year before, Zechs had taken a similar proposal as an almost gospel command and obeyed unwillingly but without question. Now, he was older and more observant, and Treize’s precisely neutral expression, phrasing and tone of voice only made the younger man immediately suspicious. “No, you won’t,” he retorted, scowling, then took a step forward daringly. “Can I come in?” he asked, even as he was already stepping past the older man into the stillness of his rooms.

 

Treize opened his mouth, likely to refuse, and closed it again as Zechs brushed him out of the way. The invasion was unexpected in the extreme – Zechs had never so blatantly ignored him to his face before – and he wasn’t immediately sure what to say or how to react. His gut instinct, to scream blue murder and toss the blond from his rooms perfunctorily, was mollified only when Treize caught the fall of the light from his reading lamp against the mark his hand had left on Zechs’s skin. The guilt that bit at him at that – he really hadn’t meant to strike the younger man that hard, or even at all, in fact – held him for just long enough for Zechs to be through his door and sitting on his couch expectantly, a much harder prospect to ignore.

 

Particularly when the blond flinched from putting his left hand down on the cushions to support himself as he sat.

 

“Are you all right?” Treize asked immediately. He gestured at Zechs’s arm when the blond looked at him with confusion on his face, and the younger man snorted a laugh.

 

“That?” Zechs asked, lifting his arm a little. “I’m fine. Just a trainee nurse who couldn’t find the vein with her needle on any of her first four attempts,” he explained dismissively. “It’s sore but hardly life-threatening. The joys of visiting the medics,” he said, rolling his eyes behind his glasses as he leaned back against the couch cushions.

 

“Somewhat,” Treize agreed, unconsciously twitching his own arm, acknowledging that being the Wing Commander had its perks. No nurse had gotten anywhere near him in the entirety of his own, extremely swift, examination earlier that evening. He’d spoken only to the senior Base physician, who’d been only too eager to help in any way he could.

 

Recognising that Zechs wasn’t going to go away any time soon, regardless of whether Treize wanted him to or not, the older man sighed softly and closed his door. “Coffee?” he asked, stepping into the room properly and heading for his little kitchen alcove.

 

Zechs blinked in surprise at the offer – it was more courtesy than he’d been expecting perhaps – and nodded willingly. “Please,” he replied quietly.

 

He stood up a moment later, crossing the room to lean on the far side of the breakfast and watch idly as Treize fussed with his coffee maker. “Hey,” he said softly, when the redhead had his back to him, standing by the sink as he rinsed the glass pot under the tap. “If you don’t mind me asking, what were you doing in the medical wing, anyway?”

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

_ Mid-June AC 192 _

_ Khushrenada Ancestral Estate – Moscow _

 

 

It was the work of only a few moments to place a phone call to Otto. The younger man wasn’t yet out of bed but that didn’t stop him answering his Wing Commander near-to immediately, his eyes clear and his answers coherent despite his sleep-rumpled appearance.

 

“No, sir,” he said promptly. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see a thing. Is he all right?” he asked worriedly, his lovely eyes soft in his concern for his closest friend and occasional lover. “He did mention having a headache last night before we left the base but it didn’t seem to be bothering him over-much. I just assumed it had cleared itself up. I wouldn’t have let him come back there alone if I’d thought he was sick,” he added hurriedly, as though worried he had somehow failed in the older man’s eyes.

 

Treize found a smile for the German pilot, more than a little familiar with his tendency to fret over his friend like a mother hen with a lone chick. “I know,” he reassured. “Although you might stop encouraging him to Absinthe cocktails!” he chided sternly, letting his continuing smile mollify the words into the teasing they were supposed to be.

 

Otto blinked, then responded in typical fashion. “Oh, but, sir!” he protested promptly. “Do I have to? He’s so much _fun_!” he exclaimed.

 

Treize laughed softly at the whiny tone Otto had summoned. “Thank you, Lieutenant Maxillian. That would be my brother you’re talking about – I do _not_ want to know the details of what you and he consider ‘fun’!”

 

“Yes, sir!” Otto replied smartly, then frowned again, pensively. “Seriously, though, I didn’t see a thing. The only thing odd he did all night was to return to the Estate rather than coming back to the Base with the rest of us and he does that at least once a week regardless.”

 

Treize nodded his agreement with that, then terminated the call, bidding Otto to go back to bed so that Jean-Remy wouldn’t have cause to yell at him again.

 

Turning away from the comm. unit, Treize frowned to himself. It was true that Zechs had a tendency to spend the odd night in his old room at the Estate rather than in his assigned quarters at the Base, but that was a product of his liking for comfort and was hardly a sign of distress when Treize himself did the same thing. It had been predictable enough behaviour from the moment it had been decided to permanently station the Zodiac Wing at the old Moscow Base regardless, behaviour not entirely discouraged by either Treize or Leia.

 

Thoughts of Leia prompted Treize to start looking for his wife again. In conjunction with Otto’s reports of symptoms prior to their night out, Treize was more inclined to think his brother had just picked up a touch of the flu that was circulating with annual regularity through the ranks, but he still couldn’t rule out a more sinister cause and had always been wary of doing so since missing it the first time it had happened a year ago.

 

 

******************

 

 

_Mid July AC 191_

_Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base _

 

 

Treize stiffened at Zechs’s question, his hands tightening automatically on the glass jug he was holding as he bit his lip. He might have expected the younger man to ask, he supposed – in fact, he had been expecting him to ask, which was why he hadn’t wanted the blond in his rooms at all.

 

“No particular reason,” Treize answered as smoothly as he could.

 

Behind him, he heard Zechs shift uneasily, the rustle of his uniform against his skin and the soft tap of his fingernails against the surface of the counter. “If you don’t want to tell me…,” he said, his voice still low, inviting intimacy between them. Treize had noted some weeks before that Zechs was developing a flair for intimidating the information he wanted out of people but he hadn’t known the blond had learned so well how to coax, too. His tone of voice was pitched just as Valadin, professional in the field as she was, would have pitched it, and was possibly more effective for being masculine and rich. It made Treize want to tell his friend the truth and he had to take a deep breath to resist the urge.

 

“I don’t,” he replied shortly, knowing it for the half-lie it was.

 

Zechs shifted again. “Say so, then,” he answered. “Don’t lie to me,” he instructed intently, leaving Treize to wonder how Zechs thought he should be giving instructions at all. “I can accept you wanting privacy but not that.”

 

That comment made Treize chuckle bitterly. “Can you?” he asked tightly. “You never have before and I’m not seeing the evidence to back the statement up now. You’re here,” he pointed out, gesturing to his rooms with his free hand as he rinsed the coffee-pot a final time and then started to dry it, “despite me asking you to go away.”

 

There was a moment’s silence, then another rustle, very much as though Zechs had just shrugged. “I don’t recall you asking me to go away,” Zechs said, and Treize could hear the frown in his voice even before he turned and could see it. “You said you weren’t for listening to me whine but you didn’t ask me to leave, or to leave you alone.”

 

Treize set the towel he was using down on the side, still holding the glass pot. “You’re being deliberately obtuse,” he snapped. “I more than made my intention clear!”

 

Zechs raised an eyebrow at the flare of temper and Treize reigned himself in forcibly. The more he reacted out of character, the more he would convince his younger friend there was something he wasn’t admitting to.

 

“I’m sorry,” Treize said quietly, glancing away for a moment. “I’m tired. It’s been a long couple of days and I haven’t had much sleep.”

 

The younger man nodded slowly. “I know the feeling, believe me. I got a few hours yesterday afternoon but other than that….” He shrugged eloquently. “Last night really wasn’t my idea, but you try telling Otto no when he thinks he’s helping.”

 

Treize knew he was supposed to reply to that, to say something encouraging given that it was a blatant lead-in to the conversation he’d already said he didn’t want to have, but he wasn’t for playing. “You’re his senior officer, Zechs,” he replied steadily, turning back to his coffee pot. “Make it an order and make it stick.”

 

“I tried,” Zechs replied, chuckling dryly. “He went and got Aristedes.” He shifted, moving a pace or two so Treize could see him again out of the corner of his eyes, and shook his head. “Besides, I don’t like doing that. If the subject is personal, I don’t think it fair to bring our professional relationship into it. It’s asking for problems in our friendship.”

 

And _that_ was the most unsubtle subtle reprimand Treize thought he’d ever heard. “Friendship or not, you have to be his commander first or you have no career,” he countered carefully.

 

He won himself another humourless laugh. “Trying to tell me something, Treize?” Zechs asked quietly.

 

Treize shrugged. “Only as much as you were trying the same tactic,” he answered. He sighed, and brought his hand to his eyes to press against them wearily, blocking the light, and the room, and Zechs out in a haze of over-pressured red. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Zechs. Not tonight.”

 

There was another moment of silence, before warm fingers touched the top of Treize’s arm lightly. “Are you all right?” Zechs asked quietly. “You were in the medical wing and you seem… off.”

 

“I’m fine,” Treize bit off, more shortly than he really should have. “I’ve already told you we’re not having that conversation, either,” he warned.

 

Zechs nodded immediately but his next words belied his acquiescence. “I know, it’s just… Treize, if you’re ill, just tell me,” he pleaded. “If you’re not feeling well, I’ll leave you alone. I want your company but not….”

 

“Not what?” Treize snapped, interrupting the blonde’s stumbling babble. “Not, what?” He shook his head sharply. “At what point am I entitled to privacy, Zechs? I’ve already told you I’m not talking about this!” The coffee pot clattered into the sink as Treize turned to glare at the younger man hotly, his breath coming rapidly as his temper surged. “Well?” he demanded harshly.

 

Zechs stared at him mutely, and his wide-eyed, frozen expression behind his glasses seemed to register with the older man after a beat, because Treize went a little wide-eyed himself and held up a hand as he took a step back. “Sorry,” he murmured breathlessly. “I’m sorry. Christ!” he swore, closing his eyes and pressing his hand to them again. “I’m sorry,” he repeated a third time, looking back at his friend. “This is why I didn’t want you here. I’m not fit company for a cat tonight,” he explained.

 

Zechs blinked once, warily. “Okay,” he said neutrally. He forced a nervous chuckle. “I’d ask why but I’m afraid you’d shoot me, so….” He shrugged. “At least I know why you slapped me now,” he offered. “You had me a little worried there,” he confessed shakily.

 

Treize gave him a wry look. “I had you worried?” he asked. “With what you said to me? Zechs, you can’t tell me you’re putting yourself in considerable personal danger as reaction to an argument between us and expect me to be fine with it!” he said sharply.

 

Zechs frowned, bewildered. “Pardon?” he asked, wondering where this was coming from. “When did I tell you that?” he asked blankly.

 

“In the med-wing,” Treize replied. “Or did I misunderstand what you were saying? You gave me to understand that your encounter with Lieutenant Aristedes was unprotected.”

 

The younger man shrugged tightly, realising that for all he’d wanted to explain to Treize, he also really didn’t. The topic of sex had never been an easy one between them and this, Zechs realised abruptly, was a conversation that was going to play perfectly to absolutely all of Treize’s worst ideas about the lifestyle choices Zechs had made. “It was,” he admitted, having already said too much to even attempt denial.

 

Treize nodded sharply. “Well, then,” he said sharply. “You see why I have to be concerned. Whatever issues you and I may have had professionally yesterday,” he continued, “you shouldn’t be responding by letting yourself be hurt like that. It smacks of a dangerous lack of self-respect and I really had hoped you thought more of yourself than that,” he said, his tone of voice very soft.

 

Zechs felt his jaw drop in disbelief as he stared at his friend impassively for a moment. “What?” he asked automatically, then spluttered a strangled, “Oh, my God!” before bursting into howling laughter.

 

He closed his eyes helplessly, leaning weakly against the counter behind him for a moment as he let the fit take him. “Have you heard yourself?” he gasped when he could form the words. He indicated Treize with his free hand and only laughed harder at the man’s truly taken aback expression. “Seriously?” he asked. He shook his head helplessly. “Otto’s going to die laughing.”

 

Treize’s face began to shade into an annoyed frown. “This isn’t funny, Zechs,” he snapped curtly. “If you really are responding to reasonable discipline in such a fashion, then there’s something seriously wrong.”

 

Zechs sobered as best he could, shaking his head again. “My only response to you yelling at me was to drink a little too much and let Otto talk me into a partner I didn’t know,” he explained. “I told you, none of what happened last night was my idea. I didn’t agree to Leander fucking me bare. I’m not rightly sure I agreed to any of it at all, frankly, but that’s beside the point.”

 

Within seconds, Zechs knew he’d said something wrong, even if he didn’t know what. Treize’s eyes flashed at his words, his expression shifting this time to outrage of another kind, and horrified shock.

 

“What?” the commander asked flatly. He paled noticeably, his lips parting as he exhaled hard. “Zechs,” he said helplessly, “Illia, are you sure?” He reached out, looking for all the world as though he were going to catch Zechs arm, then let his hand drop without completing the gesture. “You’re certain you didn’t give consent?” he quizzed gently.

 

“Pretty sure, yes,” Zechs answered truthfully. “I was way too out of it to string the words together. Does it matter?” he asked carefully, confused as to why Treize was reacting so badly.

 

And that too, apparently, was the wrong response. Treize choked, closing his eyes for a beat as his lips parted in open shock. He swallowed heavily, then looked at Zechs again, something in his expression turning his eyes dark and sorrowful. “Of course it matters,” he said quietly. “Considerably so.”

 

“Why?” Zechs wondered. He paused as he took in Treize’s nauseated, mournful expression and then rolled his eyes, shaking his head as the light dawned. “Oh please, spare me,” he said flatly. “If you’re about to suggest that Leander assaulted me last night,” he continued, “then don’t. I’m really not interested in hearing it.”

 

“You should be,” Treize replied lowly. “And if you didn’t give him consent, then assault is too mild a term for what he did to you by a long way,” he warned.

 

Zechs couldn’t help but smile, even though he knew it was the wrong reaction. “Is it?” he checked. He shook his head. “It’s hard to rape the willing, Treize,” he said, trying to soothe the older man somewhat even as he took a sadistic pleasure in the way Treize flinched at the word he’d been hedging around.

 

Really, though, Zechs suspected suddenly that he should have seen this coming because this was exactly what Valadin had tried to warn him about once. Treize, patently straight and – in Zechs’s opinion – painfully uptight about such things, was reacting to what he was being told from a completely different worldview than anything Zechs was used to. Certainly, Otto hadn’t cared a whit about who had said what to whom.

 

Treize, different worldview as cause or not, didn’t seem soothed. “Were you willing?” he asked tightly. “It doesn’t sound like it.” He frowned suddenly. “Although I’m not sure whether I’m more bothered by what may have happened to you last night, or by the fact that you don’t seem to care about it,” he confessed.

 

Zechs sighed abruptly, then shrugged. “I care,” he corrected. “Just not for the same reasons you do.” He rubbed his head slowly, trying to think of the best way to phrase his thoughts. “Look, Treize,” he started bluntly, “I’m kind of sluttish,” he admitted honestly. “I know that; I make no secret of it. Whether or not I actually let Leander have me last night really is mostly irrelevant.”

 

Treize grimaced but the way he was fidgeting strongly suggested they were close to his limit for details. “Not to me,” he said stubbornly.

 

Zechs smiled. “Which is sweet of you, admittedly, but also irrelevant. Didn’t you say you weren’t for playing guidance counsellor tonight?” he asked, determined to distract the older man.

 

“Yes, but….” Treize started, then stopped as Zechs shook his head.

 

“Well, then, stop talking before you get to the bit of this that does upset me.” Zechs shrugged, forcing the gesture to be careless. “We’ll agree to talk about the weather for the rest of the night or something.”

 

The off-hand comment at least won him a dry snort from the other man. “What rest of the night?” Treize asked. “I’m waiting for Une to give me the end of shift report and then I’m going to bed. From the look of you, you should be doing the same.”

 

“Ah,” Zechs said, then shifted uneasily. “I was hoping to talk you into letting me sleep on your couch, actually,” he admitted. “If you wouldn’t mind?” he tried, infusing his tone with more hopefulness than Treize was comfortable hearing.

 

The older man hoped his wince wasn’t visible but suspected it had been when Zechs flinched. “I’m sorry,” he started immediately but the blond waved him off.

 

“No, it’s all right,” he said hurriedly, having read every inch of Treize’s reluctance from the involuntary start the older man had given. “I shouldn’t have asked. You’ve already told me you don’t want company. I’m being daft anyway,” he added, with a forced smile. “And lazy. I’m trying to avoid cleaning up my room!”

 

Treize seemed to settle at that, raising one knowing eyebrow as he shook his head and turned to rescue his abandoned coffee pot. “Teenagers,” he muttered dryly. “Two months without regular room inspections and they lose all sense of discipline.”

 

“Blame Otto,” Zechs fired back, “not me. When have I ever been untidy?”

 

At that, Treize laughed softly. “You forget I knew you as a child,” he reminded. “How many times did my mother force me into helping you clear up your room?”

 

It hadn’t been all that often, to Zechs’s memory, and the mess had usually been the result of one of Treize’s schemes in the first place, but there was enough truth in the older officer’s needling that the blond felt himself blush a little regardless. “You always got even for it,” he replied, “and besides, it turned out to be good practice, didn’t it? Think your mother knew you’d be a father this soon?” he asked lightly.

 

Treize’s pause was momentary, but the sudden stillness set all sorts of alarm bells ringing in Zechs’s head. He was hypersensitive to family troubles, particularly when they concerned Treize, and that reaction was as good as waving a red cloak in front of a bull.

 

A cloud of frightened worry dawning in his mind, Zechs took a slow step forward, reaching out to the older man automatically. “Treize?” he asked carefully, letting his tone tell his friend that Zechs was on to him.

 

Treize stilled in his reassembly of his coffee machine, tensing under Zechs’s fingertips as he shook his head. “Don’t,” he answered emptily.

 

Zechs frowned. “Don’t what?” he asked. He solidified his grip on the redhead, seeking for the leverage to make him turn around. “Don’t what, Treize?” he pressed.

 

“Just don’t,” the older man replied. He shifted to free himself from Zechs’s hand, shrugging him off roughly.

 

The blond pulled his hand back obediently, but only to step closer still. “Treize, if…,” he started, and stopped when a knock on the door echoed through the room.

 

The relief in Treize’s posture was all the confirmation Zechs needed that there really was something wrong but the older man moved too quickly for him to pursue it further.

 

“That will be Lady Une,” the Commander said swiftly. He stepped away from his little kitchen, crossing his room rapidly to gather up some papers he had resting on his couch. “I’m sorry to renege on that offer of coffee but I do have to speak with her. Let her in on your way out, would you?” he instructed.

 

Zechs hesitated, every instinct that screamed at him to stay and press his friend until Treize confessed in direct conflict with the part that was conditioned to obey military discipline, then reluctantly turned for the door when Une knocked again.

 

He paused again with his hand on the door latch. “Should I come back later?” he asked awkwardly, tumbling the words out in a hopeful rush. He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, silently begging Treize to look up at him and say yes, but the older man didn’t waver from his paper-collecting.

 

“Whatever for, Zechs?” he answered firmly. “Go. I’ll meet you for breakfast before the morning briefing.”

 

It should have been a comforting offer, except that breakfast was served in the mess hall, in public, where Zechs couldn’t even begin to ask the hundred questions pressing in his mind, as Treize was undoubtedly intending.

 

It suddenly occurred to the blond how much easier it was going to be for Treize to avoid being alone with him as Wing Commander and Squadron Leader than it had been as Instructor and Cadet. There was no professional route of access guaranteed now as there had been until a few weeks before – Treize was entirely entitled to relay all military matters either through Une or through Jean-Remy, and there was nothing Zechs could do about it.

 

It made him even more uncomfortable about leaving Treize now, but as Une knocked a third time and Treize lifted his head to glare at him, the blond acknowledged that he had no real choice and opened the door.

 

It was only when he saw Une on the other side, waiting impatiently, that another idea came to him.

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

_ Mid July AC 191 _

_ Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base _

 

 

Zechs stared at the young woman in front of him blankly for a moment, ignoring the ill-tempered scowl on her face as he thought furiously.

 

“Une,” he said quietly.

 

“What of it, Lieutenant?” Une snapped sharply. “Is there a reason you are blocking the Commander’s doorway?” she demanded.

 

Zechs glanced over his shoulder, then back at the girl in front of him and suddenly closed Treize’s door firmly behind himself. “Une,” he said again. “I need to talk to you.”

 

The Lady’s expression shaded from annoyed to actively hostile. “And I have to speak with the Commander, Lieutenant. Get out of my way,” she ordered.

 

“No,” Zechs replied. He reached out, too fast for Une to avoid, and caught the Lady’s arm in his hand. “I need to talk to you now.”

 

Une struggled immediately, furious. “Take your hands off me, Marquise,” she demanded. “Right now!”

 

Zechs shook his head again. “No,” he repeated. “This way,” he instructed and gave a tug on her arm that left Une with no choice but to follow his lead back down the corridor.

 

She did so reluctantly, glaring at him thunderously the entire time, but helpless against the almost comical discrepancy in height, weight and brute strength unless she was willing to truly hurt him. “You’d better have a damned good reason for assaulting a senior officer, Marquise,” she warned dangerously, as they rounded the bend in the corridor that separated Treize’s suite from all the other officers’.

 

Zechs let her go, standing between her and the way back to their Commander’s rooms. “That wasn’t an assault, Une,” he dismissed. “Sorry, but he has ears like a bat,” he explained.

 

Une only glared harder. “I beg your pardon?” she challenged.

 

“Treize,” Zechs elaborated. “He has ears like a bat. He’d have heard us talking outside his room, and I didn’t want that.”

 

“So, you chose to manhandle me down the corridor?” Une snapped.

 

Zechs shrugged and nodded. “Yes. You wouldn’t have come willingly.”

 

Une’s expression shifted to one of outraged disbelief. “Of course I wouldn’t have. I have an appointment with Commander Treize!” she spluttered. “Furthermore, I have absolutely no desire to speak to you any more than I categorically have to!”

 

Zechs narrowed his eyes at her behind his glasses, holding up a hand to stop her when she opened her mouth again. “Then shut up a minute and listen to me,” he ordered, “and I’ll keep this as short as I can.”

 

“You’d better,” Une muttered warningly, but she subsided. “Well?”

 

Zechs shook his head at her, folding his arms across his chest. “I need your help,” he said flatly.

 

Une blinked. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, tilting her head. “You need my help?” she repeated blankly. “What the hell makes you think I’ll help you?” she demanded. “Marquise, I don’t know how you’ve missed this but I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire. I’d as soon see you burn in hell as help you!”

 

Zechs smiled coldly. “Believe me, the feeling is mutual,” he replied darkly, “but I’m not asking for myself.” He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at the Lady, his posture softening. “There’s something wrong with Treize and he won’t tell me what,” he explained. “I need you to find out for me.”

 

The Lady’s pretty face seemed to waver into an almost charming concern for a moment before she steadied it into a murderous glare. “Excuse me?” she spat. “You want me to be your spy?”

 

Zechs nodded. “It’s what you are,” he answered easily.

 

“Fuck you,” Une hissed viciously, before matching how he was standing and folding her arms across her chest. “What makes you think he’ll tell me anything, anyway?” she challenged.

 

The blond shrugged. “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” he replied, wondering if he could coerce her into using language like that in front of Treize. The older man hated women cursing, and would certainly call her on it if nothing else.

 

Une hesitated in her answer and Zechs thought for a moment she was going storm off rather than admitting it.

 

She rallied a split second later, drawing herself to her full height stiffly as she pinned him with a glacial look. “I don’t know what sort of depraved tricks you use in bed, Marquise, but not all of us are as whorish as you are.”

 

No doubt, she was intending to insult him horribly, but she didn’t know him nearly well enough to know which buttons to push. She’d missed the mark by a mile with that one, and Zechs just laughed at her dryly. “Oh, really?” he asked. “I know who trained you, Une, and I know who ordered you to play bed-warmer for Treize, so don’t come that. If you’re one-tenth the woman your mistress is, he’ll tell you anything you want to know and do it gladly.”

 

Une’s eyes flashed at Zechs again but she didn’t yield. “Perhaps so,” she acknowledged. “Perhaps I can get him to tell me. Why should I then tell you?”

 

It was Zechs’s turn to glare murderously. “I’m his brother, Une!” he spluttered.

 

Une nodded. “Yes, which means if he wanted you to know, he’d have told you already.” She gazed at him levelly. “You’ll have to give me more than that to convince me to betray his secrets to you, Marquise. I’m not seeing how I’m helping him by doing so.”

 

“You’re not seeing it,” Zechs fired back, “because you don’t know him, Une. Don’t argue,” he warned viciously. “You can’t argue. You’ve known him all of what, two months? That might have been long enough for you to get into his bed, but, believe me, it’s not nearly long enough for you to have learned how he thinks and feels. He chokes, Une,” he continued, his tone conveying the seriousness of the information he was sharing. “Professionally, he’s untouchable, but on personal pain, he chokes. Particularly if the cause might possibly be some failure in himself.”

 

Zechs closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “Worse, he won’t share anything that might become a burden for the other person. I’m usually the last person he tells about anything that’s troubling him because he thinks he has to look after me.”

 

Une shrugged tightly. “Perhaps if you behaved like an adult occasionally, he wouldn’t think like that,” she suggested nastily. “And I still don’t see why I should tell you anything. If he wants to talk, he can talk to me.”

 

Zechs glared. “Not about his family, he can’t!” he snapped. “Look, he gave away enough that I know the problem is with his family. He has a two year old daughter and a wife who is pregnant and….”

 

“Was,” Une interrupted mildly.

 

Zechs froze, almost mid-word. “…What?”

 

The Lady shrugged. “Was pregnant, not is. She miscarried yesterday morning. He got a message from her doctor last night.”

 

The words, so casual, made Zechs flinch into himself, sagging against the wall behind him as he closed his eyes. “…Jesus Christ…” he said, under his breath. “Again?”

 

“I beg your pardon, Marquise?” Une snapped, tilting her head as she watched his reaction.

There was a moment of silence before Zechs responded to her. “You really know how to deliver bad news gently, don’t you?” he bit off. “Or had you forgotten that’s my family you’re talking about?”

 

Une shrugged. “It isn’t my place to deliver news to you, good or bad. I was simply correcting your misinformation. If His Excellency wanted the news delivering more gently, he should have done so himself.”

 

“Which would be my point!” Zechs fired back, then swallowed as he realised how loud his voice had become in the dead space of the corridor. If he wasn’t careful, Treize would hear him shouting and would come looking to find out why. “My sister in law miscarries, but he hasn’t told me – do you think that’s normal behaviour, Une?”

 

Une merely shrugged at him carelessly. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps, Marquise, you should consider that she might be your sister in law but she’s his wife and it was his child,” she said. “Perhaps you should consider that his reaction is considerably stronger and certainly more important than yours.”

 

“Perhaps I should,” Zechs returned shortly. “And perhaps that would be exactly my point!” he repeated, glaring at her. “ His ‘reaction’, as you put it so delicately, is so ‘considerably stronger’ that he’s forgetting to convey basic but important information to the people that should and need to have it. Not great in a Wing Commander, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

Une shrugged again. “That would assume I don’t think there’s a difference between personal conduct and professional, which I do. His Excellency is more than capable of managing such a split. You’re overreacting,” she dismissed. “His Excellency may well be justifiably upset by his wife’s news but it’s not the tragedy of epic proportions you want it to be and he’s not going to fall apart because of it. He’s an eminently sensible man – he’ll grieve, yes, and then he’ll conclude that both he and his wife are both young and healthy with one child already and he’ll simply move on and try again. There’s no reason to think this was anything other than bad luck. Now, can we drop this nonsense, please? I’m sure His Excellency would be thoroughly displeased with the fact that we’re even discussing it like this. It’s not my place and nor is it yours,” she reminded curtly.

 

She was right, Zechs knew, in many respects – Treize wouldn’t just be displeased if he caught them, he’d be furious – and yet, she was also so wrong. “And there you go,” he said, “showing how little you know. What you say might have been the case if this had been Leia’s first miscarriage, but it isn’t. It’s her second. She lost the first child in March.”

 

He watched as Une blinked, her eyes flickering as she processed that information; watched as she clearly began spiralling through all the things he’d thought whilst standing in Treize’s cabin on the training ship four months earlier, assessing all the personal and, yes, all the professional and political implications.

 

Her stance shifted subtly and Zechs took that as his cue. “He reacted badly the first time, Une, to the point of slipping in his duties. How much worse this time? And how much less room has he got to hide such a slip?” The blond shook his head. “He won’t cope alone, Une – call Valadin if you don’t believe me. And if he won’t cope alone and he won’t so much as tell me the problem, that leaves you – and you’ll have to do a lot more than talk.”

 

Une took a step backwards. “Excuse me?” she snapped. “That’s the second time you’ve made that insinuation and I don’t care for it!”

 

“Care for it or not, it’s the truth,” Zechs answered shortly. “Talking didn’t help him last time – I tried. It took Valadin to sort him out and I’m pretty damn certain on how she did it. Since you’re her replacement, it makes sense to think it will take you this time, doing much the same thing.”

 

Une’s back stiffened and her eyes flashed. “You know, Marquise, you really are a whore! Not everything can be solved with a quick fuck!” she spat, turned on her heel and began walking away.

 

Zechs didn’t move. “Not everything,” he agreed softly, “but it can’t hurt.” There was a pause, then, just before she passed hearing range, he added, “There was a reason Valadin got you your job after all.”

 

Une didn’t acknowledge the barb but she felt it slide home. There had been a reason the older woman had gotten her the job, and she well knew what part of that job had been meant to entail.

 

True, she’d been working on it, playing a slow game, but it had been a slower game than it should have been, to the point that Marquise had made a critical misjudgement when he insisted she ‘help’ Treize. He’d simply assumed that she and Treize were already lovers.

 

They weren’t.

 

They should have been, Une could and should have had Treize in bed with her three weeks earlier, but she’d delayed, thinking she had plenty of time. She’d wanted the slow burn, wanted to build the relationship she had with the man into something she hadn’t looked at properly, into something she knew that Valadin hadn’t ever been intending.

 

It had started the moment Treize had taken her hand and kissed it in the Academy ballroom, responding to her word games with a devastating smile and a quick wit. She felt as though she’d started to float from the second he began to dance with her, and her feet hadn’t touched ground yet.

 

For the first time in her life, she’d found herself wanting more than to fulfil her mission objective and she’d let herself act on her new and strange feelings, telling herself that she wasn’t compromising her job because what she wanted and what she’d been assigned to do were roughly the same thing.

 

She’d even managed to convince herself that the delay was good tactics, that waiting for Treize to make the opening move would make whatever relationship came of it that much stronger, and therefore more effective. If he learned to care for her, as she had suddenly found she did for him, then she could be everything he needed her to be.

 

Except that she wasn’t supposed to be everything he needed. Valadin had been expressly clear on that. She had not sent Une in to compromise Treize’s relationship with his wife – Une was there to be Liliya’s replacement, not Leia’s, which meant he should never, could never, care for her as more than a friend.

 

And friendship wasn’t what Une had been letting build.

 

She paused before his door, acknowledging that truth to herself for the first time. Treize had gotten under her skin almost the moment they met and her motives had been flawed ever since. She’d been working to create a relationship between the two of them, a romantic idyll, thinking that it wouldn’t hurt anyone if it took a little longer and no-one ever knew.

 

Now, though, she’d run out of time, and what feeling had built was only going to make what she knew she had to do next all the more painful. Because Zechs, damn him, was right.

 

 

********************

 

Zechs watched Une as she walked away from him, wondering both whether he had done the right thing and whether he had completely lost his mind. He hated the girl – why was he giving her an in on a deeper hold on his brother? Because however much, for Treize's sake, he wanted Une to be successful in her endeavours, if she was it said something about her relationship with the older man that Zechs didn't want to acknowledge.

 

Shaking his head at his own conflicted wishes, Zechs turned on his heel and headed for the door, seeking the slightly cooler evening air rather than returning to his room. The last thing he wanted to do was to go back to the state he'd left it in that morning and frankly, after the last 24 hours, he wasn't convinced his being alone was a good idea. Time to brood would be a mistake.

 

Besides, he rather thought he owed Otto an apology after that morning – the other boy had been trying to help and Zechs had been rude, if not downright hostile in response. Their friendship was old and close enough that it would probably survive it but Otto deserved better.

 

He nodded a curt greeting to the officer he passed in the doorway but didn't look up, not wishing to start a conversation if he could avoid it, and so was taken totally off guard when the man suddenly gripped his arm in a tight hand, immediately and effectively preventing Zechs from moving any further.

 

“Well, now, aren't you even going to say hello?”

 

The blonde's head snapped up at the voice and he glared through narrowed eyes, not caring that his assailant couldn't see the expression through his darkened glasses.

 

“Take your hands off me,” Zechs hissed. “Now.”

 

Leander Aristedes released Zechs immediately, stepping back automatically from the venom in the younger pilot's voice.

 

He recovered almost instantly, raising an eyebrow as he folded his arms and leaned back against the door jam, blocking Zechs's path unless he chose – or was made – to move. “Nice, Marquise,” he commented. “I was hoping you'd have gotten over yourself by now.” He tilted his head. “Apparently not.”

 

“Apparently not,” Zechs retorted. “Forgive me if I need more than 12 hours to get over being threatened and assaulted.”

 

Aristedes smirked. “I'll forgive you – you've had 14. And I didn't threaten you,” he corrected. “Or assault you, for that matter. You had fair chance to tell me no,

so don't be a drama queen.”

 

Zechs's recollection on the evening before begged to differ on that but he wasn't in the mood to get into a debate about it. “Whatever,” he said shortly. “How about you get out of my way, we'll both get where we were going and you won't have to deal with me being anything?”

 

The Greek pilot scowled at Zechs's continuing hostility, then smiled. “Well, that would be lovely, except I was going to see you. You seemed really rather flustered last night and your little friend Otto just tore strips out of me in the mess hall. He's rather concerned about you, and very protective. Must be nice having someone that in love with you,” he finished casually.

 

Zechs had been moving as he spoke but he drew up short at Aristedes' words, listening with mounting disbelief, then snorting with ill-tempered laughter. “Otto's not in love with me,” he dismissed.

 

“You keep telling yourself that but something just prompted him to sound off at a superior officer on your behalf,” Aristedes replied. “If I were anyone else he'd be in a world of trouble right now. Fortunately for him, I thought it was rather...cute.”

 

Zechs, frankly, didn't give a stuff about what the Greek man found cute or not, and he suspected his face showed the thought because the other pilot started to scowl again.

 

“Look, Marquise,” Aristedes said flatly. “I really was coming to see you. Weird as it might seem to you, I'm not in the habit of leaving my partners freaking out. I've been bothered by it all day, and looking at you, I was right to be. You look like crap,” he said bluntly. “Should've figured you'd be one to have a bad reaction.”

 

“To what?” Zechs asked shortly. “Being shoved up against a wall and fucked without so much as a by-your-leave? Can't think why I'd be bothered by that!” he spat, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Or maybe it's that you thought threatening me with what you think you know about me makes good pillow talk. Nothing like putting someone in fear of their life to make for a good fuck, right?”

The older pilot levelled Zechs a look that was a mix of pity and irritation. “Are you always this over the top?” he questioned. “I meant to the Verve. Not that I've ever encountered a pilot that had problems with it before,” he explained. “The only people I've known go trippy have been civilians.”

 

Zechs caught his breath, staring blankly at the Greek man. “The _what_?” he asked harshly.

 

He didn't need Aristedes to answer him, though. He knew the name. Verve was a club drug, not really much stronger or any more illegal than the liquid gold he and Otto played with. It was a recent take on an old compound; a clear, tasteless liquid that acted like alcohol, lowering inhibition, heightening sensitivity, reportedly increasing sexual interest and enjoyment. Otto had taken it a few times and had reported it quite good fun but Zechs had always stayed well clear – and not just because he'd promised Treize he wouldn't dabble.

 

“You spiked my drink,” he said coldly, realisation dawning that the Greek man had tampered with the drink he'd fixed them both.

 

Aristedes shrugged casually. “I put about half a dose in the absinthe, yes,” he agreed mildly. “You were starting to crash off it, getting bitchy and I couldn't be bothered with it so I boosted you a little. I didn't realise you'd have so sensitive a dose-curve until you went mental at me.” He shrugged again. “I'm sorry for that. Hence why I'm checking on you.”

 

Zechs felt his hands clench until he could feel his fingernails digging furrows into his palms and resisted the urge to knock the other man senseless by the skin of his teeth. The disorientation, the lack of resistance, he'd felt the night before were making sense now, as was the fact that he'd been sick to his stomach all day.

 

“Nice story,” he spat, “except that I don't take drugs. I never have. You couldn't have 'boosted' something I hadn't taken in the first place. Unless you gave me that dose without me knowing either,” he concluded. “Just how many times did you spike my drink?” he asked angrily.

 

In contrast to Zechs's growing temper, the Greek pilot's expression was one of pure confusion. “What do you mean you 'don't take drugs'?” he asked. “I saw the Liquid Gold, for a start, so you clearly do. I didn't give you any dose you didn't know about until the absinthe; you knew you were using my lube.”

 

“It was in the lube?” Zechs spluttered. “And you didn't think we needed to know that?”

 

Aristedes scowled. “Know what? That I happen to use the same brand of lube as damn near every gay pilot in the Specials? Come off it, Marquise, you aren't going to make me believe you don't know why we all use that one. Rookies you and Otto might be, but I'm not going to believe you've never fucked any pilot but each other.”

 

Zechs glared, coldly angry. “Otto has. I haven't. And I had no idea.”

 

There was a moment of silence whilst Aristedes stared at the blond in dumb shock, then, “Well, fuck,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry, Marquise. I just assumed you knew,” he apologised, and he sounded genuinely sorry. “Really, nearly every pilot uses that make. Our training means we all handle the side-effects from the Verve with no trouble so all we get is a nice kick from it. It's just... the norm. Honestly.” He stopped, then winced and half-extended his hand towards Zechs, hesitating before making contact. “Marquise?” he asked. “Do me a favour – tell me again that you'd been topped before last night?”

 

Zechs was still glaring. “Yes, I had been but only by Otto. It's not something I let complete strangers do.”

 

The Greek pilot visibly cringed. “Christ. No wonder you think I'm a bastard.” He finished reaching for the blond and brushed his fingers against the red wool of Zechs's coat lightly. “I suppose I should be grateful you haven't found me and punched me out. I really am sorry. I wouldn't have if I'd known that.”

 

Zechs looked at the other pilot and suddenly found his anger deserting him, leaving him completely worn out by the stress of the day. “I've been too busy puking,” he sighed wearily. “I don't care about the sex,” he admitted. “I'd have said no if I could have but I honestly don't know why I would have. It had to happen at some point and as I said to Treize, it's hard to rape the willing. I'm furious you thought I'd be okay with the bareback, though. That's just stupid!”

 

Aristedes' expression went through a series of lightning fast changes as Zechs spoke – relief at his admission of not caring, sheer horror at his mention of Treize and finally confusion at his last comment. “You expected me to use a condom? But we're both pilots and.... fuck me, you won't know that either!” he exclaimed. “I thought you and Otto had some sort of kink going when you wanted them earlier on. Pilots don't. It's a thing, like the lube. We're all so carefully screened medically that the chances of anything nasty slipping through are minimal and besides, if we can't trust each other...” he shrugged. “With a civvy, yes, we're all for being careful, but not with each other. We're a unit, we look after each other by looking after ourselves outside the fold. Makes for more fun, for one thing.”

 

He gave Zechs half a breath to process that, then touched Zechs’s arm again. “It’s the damn coat. You look like a vet, and I treated you like one. Is there anything I can do, other than apologise?”

 

Zechs shook his head. “Promise never to drug me again, without explicitly telling me you are?” he offered weakly. “There are reasons I don’t do well with stuff.”

 

The Greek man nodded immediately to Zechs’s request and then, abruptly, his face was full of sympathy. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess there would be, too.”

 

Zechs was suddenly reminded of Treize’s words earlier that day.

 

“ _There aren’t all that many people of your age in that, ah, particular social class,”_ he’d said. _“Lieutenant Aristedes is one of the few, so you’d certainly have known him, if nothing else. It’s likely, actually, that if you’d both still turned out gay, your families would have been talking about a formal contract between the two of you by now.”_

 

Angry though he’d been at the time, Zechs knew Treize was right, and he suddenly found himself curious about this other Prince, who might, in a different world, have one day been his consort.

 

“Not here,” Zechs said shortly, cutting the Greek pilot off when it looked like he was going to say something further. “I can’t… being overheard would be a disaster.” He bit his lip. “My room is a mess from last night but as long as you don’t mind that, we could talk there?” he offered.

 

There was a moment’s silence, then Aristedes nodded. “I can cope with mess. You might want to get hold of your little friend before too much longer, though. I wasn’t kidding about him tearing me a new one!”

 

 


End file.
